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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 



BULLETIN, 1919, No. 8 



LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD 

THE FIRST UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER 
OF EDUCATION. 1867-1870 

BY 

BERNARD C. STEINER 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINllNG OFHCE 

1919 



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OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM 

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GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

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AUG U 1919 



CONTENTS. 



Pase. 

Preface 

Chapter I.— Early years and education (1811-1S30) 7 

II.— Teaching, travel, and law (1830-1837) 14 

III.— Member of the Connecticut Legislature (1837-1840) 24 

IV. — Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Commissioners of 

Common Schools (1838-1842) 32 

V. — State superintendent of schools in Rhode Island (1843- 

1849) 53 

VI. — State superintendent of education in Connecticut (1850- 

1855) 63 

VII.— The American Journal of Education (1855-1860) and the 
chancellorship of the University of Wisconsin (1858- 

1860) 84 

VIII. — Authorship (1860-186(3) and presidency of St. John's 

College, Annapolis,. Md. (1866-67) 94 

IX. — United States Commissioner of Education (1867-1870)— 104 

X.— Last years (1870-1900) 114 

Appendix. — Eeminiscences of Henry Barnard. By David N. Camp 129 



PREFACE. 

Henry Barnard was " one of the men who revitalized the Ameri- 
can common-school system" (Nation, Aug. 5, 1914, p. 178), and, as 
such, he is clearly worthy of a biograph3^ Not only was his service 
a noted one to elementary education, but as college president and as 
the organizer of the United States Bureau of Education his activity 
also touched other parts of our educational development. If he left 
untouched any field of instruction in these various activities of his 
career, he certainly claimed the whole universe of education as his 
province through his editorship of the American Journal of Educa- 
tion. Like Nestor, he lived through two generations of men and then 
sat amid the third, which gladly did him honor. His great saying 
is worthy of remembrance that the country should have " schools 
good enough for the best and cheap enough for the poorest." 

"A man's life ought to be written only when he is a representative 
man, integrated with the life of the times, an enunciator of great 
thoughts, or one who has done Avonderful acts," said President Francis 
L. Patton in a recent sermon. Judged b}^ these canons, Barnard's life 
should be written, for he comes within at least three of them. No 
one stood forth as a truer representative of the inquiring, eager, earn- 
est spirit of the American nineteenth centur}^, seeking to know what 
was true and to know how to attain success in encountering the 
problems of life. 

The especial thanks of the author are due to Dr. Barnard's daugh- 
ters, who have given him access to their father's papers, permitting 
him to have full use of them. These papers are for the most part 
in the custody of the Watkinson Library, Hartford ; and Mr. Frank 
B. Gay, the librarian, gave every courtesy needed, while they were 
being examined. Mr. David N. Camp, who so long was associated 
with Dr. Barnard, has contributed some interesting reminiscences, 
Avhich are printed as an appendix. The statement of Rev. Anson P. 
Stokes, in his " Memorials of Eminent Yale Men," that " a life of 
Henry Barnard is a desideratum," was the first suggestion that this 

work be written. 

5 



LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 



Chapter I. 
EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION (1811-1830). 



In 1810 the census taker found 6,003 people in Hartford. The 
town was a county seat as well as one of the two capitals of the 
State, and the legislature met there in semiannual session ; but there 
was little else to distinguish the place from other New England 
towns. The clapboarded houses standing along the streets were occu- 
pied by people of English blood, whose ancestors had come to 
America more than 150 years before. The standing order of the 
Congi-egational Churches had not yet been swept away by the con- 
stitution of 1818, and the State of Connecticut had not been stirred 
to manufacturing by the embargo, the War of 1812, and the subse- 
quent tariffs. On South Main Street, near an open common known 
as the South Green, in a large double house built of bricks and sur- 
rounded by ample grounds, Henry Barnard 2d was born on January 
24, 1811. His father was a well-to-do farmer who had the intelli- 
gence characteristic of the old Puritan stock. He had spent some 
time in seafaring, as had so many a Connecticut man, and the son 
remembered his return on one occasion, bringing an orange to the 
boy. Mrs. Barnard's maiden name was Elizabeth Andrus. Her 
influence upon her son was not long to continue, for one of his 
earliest memories was watching from an upper window in February, 
1815, a funeral which he was told was his mother's. There were 
other children. Of the home life, in after j-ears Barnard Avrote : " It 
was my blessed inheritance to be born in a family in which chore- 
doing and mutual help was the rule and habit and happiness." 

Among the remembrances of his early youth were those of the 
firing of a "big gun" on the South Green, early in 1815, to cele- 
brate the conclusion of peace with Great Britain; the great gale of 
September of that year, which wrenched a branch from the great elm 
before the house; the reception to Commodore MacDonough in Feb- 
ruary, 1817; and the parade with which President Madison was re- 
ceived in Hartford in the following June. As long afterwards as 
1897 he recalled the Hartford County Agricultural Show held upon 
the South Green, October 1, 1818. 

7 



8 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

He learned to say " Now I laj' me down to sleep " from an elder 
sister and received the usual training in the Westminster Catechisni, 
of which training he expressed disapproval in later years. 

His school life began with instruction at Mis s B gntng^s Dame 
School, whence he was soon transferred to the South District School. 

The talk of the South Green did not run to Latin, Greek, and 
mathematics; nor Avas his early boyhood spent with the sons of col- 
k'ge graduates. On Saturdays he acquired the habit of taking long 
walks, and out of school hours he played what the boys called " golf," 
luobably hockey or shinny, as well as football, and such other sports 
as could be indulged in on the public highways. In the winter, snow- 
ball battles were waged with the pupils of the Hartford Grammar 
School, founded by the bequest of Gov. Hopkins in the seventeenth 
century, whose pupils were thought by the Southside boys to be a 
privileged set, coming mostly from uptown families.^ 

Barnard did not enjoy the district school, and in 1838 spoke pub- 
licl}' of himself ^ as a " victim of a miserable district school." In 
after years, however, he looked back with gratitude upon his experi- 
ence in that school, because it was " a school of equal rights,^ where 
merit, and not social position, was the acknowledged basis of dis- 
tinction and therefore the fittest seminary to give the schooling es- 
sential to the American citizen." 

So wa-etched did he become that when he was 12 years old * he 
thought of running off to sea. His father overheard him plotting 
Avith a friend to do this and wisely told the boy that it was time 
for him to leave the common school and that he might go to board- 
ing school or to sea. He also had the opportunity of going to the 
local grammar school, but chose to spend the year as a student in 
the academy at Monson, Hampden County, Mass. This school was 
chosen because his comra^le had friends there, and thither his father 
drove Avith him in 1823. At 13 years of age, Barnard, " fortunate to 
get away from the miserable routine and cruel discipline of the old 
South District School," was boarding in the family of Deacon Ray- 
mond, in a " beautiful village." ^ In Monson Academy, Barnard 
enjoyed— 

one year of thorough training in my English studies ami of l^incl, encourag- 
ing advice as to how to study and use boolis from tliat accomplished teacher, 
Sanuiel B. Woolworth, afterward the successful principal of Cortland Acad- 

' 2H Am. J. Ed., 208. Chauncey Barnarcl, a brother with whom Henry corresponded 
while on his southern trip in 1833, is given in the Hartford Directory of 1828 as living 
at .•!28 Main Street. 

2 28 Am. J. Ed., 227. 

» 4 N. E. Mag., 445, May, 1886. 

* Hughes, James L., in N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, 560, 1896. t 

17 Am. J. Ed., 563, by Rev. Charles Hammond ; 28 Am. J. Ed., 208. ' 



m 



EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATIOIT. 9 

emy, Now York, and for a quarter of a century secretary of the board of regents 
of the University of the State of New Yorli. Not less profitable was my classi- 
cal instruction from the principal, Rev. Simeon Col ton.** 

The journey to Monson gave Barnard his first conscious enjoy- 
ment of natural scenery, the love of which, he wrote in 1890, had 
grown throughout his whole life. Not only the instruction given at 
Monson Academy and its natural surroundings pleased him ; but also, 
even in old age, he felt that he had " never met a more pure, benevo- 
lent, hospitable people, or more general intelligence, than in Monson." 
The students had come from 20 towns of Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut, and association with them stimulated his mind as much as 
the sympathetic and thorough insti'uction received from the teachers.'^ 
Many of these fellow students were " of mature age, great earnest- 
ness, and high purpose," who " went and were not sent " to school. 
Barnard joined the Linofilian Literary Society and wrote, years after- 
wards, that — 

the book, as the garnered wisdom, always had a charm and value to me ; and 
the library, not having many books at home, was my admiration and delight ; 
and research for debate, for myself and others, was always my delight. To 
books, libraries, and debate I owe more than to school, college, or professors. 

He developed a — 

love of nature, from the romantic valley in which Monson lies, and gained an 
interest in the wider range of social and industrial problems through visits to 
rural homes of schoolmates and investigation of numerous factories of the 
neighborhood. 

In June, 1895^ he attended the commencement exercises at the 
academy and heard an older fellow student, Trask, of Saratoga, de- 
scribe him as a boy " who played all the time, but beat us all at our 
lessons." ^ It is not too much to say that Barnard's life received such 
important influence from this year that to this period we may date 
the purpose of which he told the reporter of the Hartford Times 
in 1894 : 

Ever since I was conscious of any purpose, the aim of my life has been to 
gather and disseminate knowledge, useful knowledge — knowledge not always 
available by the many but useful to all, to gather it fi-om sources not always 
available even to students and scatter It broadcast. 

On the youth's return from Monson, he spent several months in 
study with Rev. Abel Flint." From him Barnard learned Greek 
and surveying. The boy regarded his tutor as "the most eloquent 
J nan of his day," and recalled him as a man of "impressive 
appearance." 

8 A. B., Yale, 1806 ; d. 1868 ; at one time president of Mississippi College. 

»N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, 560, 1896. 

8 Ibid., 562. 

• A. B., Yale, 1785, d. 1825. 



10 LIFE OF HENRY BARXARD. 

At the end of this tutoring Barnard entered the Hopkins Gram- 
mar School, at Hartford, of Avhich William M. Holland" was mas- 
ter, " well prepared to profit by its exclusive classical training in- 
doors, as for its vigorous games of football out of doors, by my 
long practice in all sorts of foot exercises and ball playing on the 
South Green."" Holland was "one of tlie best teachers" Barnard 
ever knew. Barnard wrote in 1870 : 

The trustees made, in his case, the same mistake as I think they had before 
and since made — let the institution become a school of practice for Yale Col- 
lege tutors, or the place where future professors could spend their " pedagogic 
year," as the Germans call this opportunity for young candidates for the sec- 
ondary schools to test and develop their skill in method and discipline. 

In retrospect, Barnard felt that he "never enjoyed school life 
more." Among the students with Barnard were: Prof. Thomas A. 
Thachei', of Yale College; Kev. A. L. Chapin, of Beloit College; 
and Prof. N. P. Seymour, of Western Reserve College. In 1870 
Barnard wrote that : "" 

Mr. Holland was the sort of teacher I needed. He was prepared to solve 
promptly all questions of my starting. He knew the books and just the chap- 
ters and passages which I could read with advantage in connection with my 
lesson before I camo to the recitation, and my recitations in Greek were by 
myself, out of school hours ; and instead of puzzling my brain over the mean- 
ing of particles and the mystery of declensions and moods, he encouraged me 
to read and acquire a vocabulary by reading, and explained felicitous passages 
by parallel passages in English literature. I read the whole of Homer's Illiad, 
one or two orations of Demosthenes, and several books of Herodotus and 
Thucydides. The result was bad, in one respect; my preparation for my Greek 
recitations in college cost me little effort, in consequence of which I made little 
progress in that study; but, on the other hand, it left me time to read, which 
I improved, to my great delight, in the perusal of the best English authors." 

While at the grammar school he borrowed books from the Hart- 
ford Library, having access thereto through the kindness of Mr. 
Daniel Wadsworth and being advised in his reading by Mr. Holland. 

Stimulated by his school training to desire a college course, Bar- 
nard entered Yale in 182G and graduated with the degree of bachelor 
of arts in 1830. He won a Berkeley premium in his sophomore 
year " and was in the first sixth of the class in scholarship through- 
out the course, winning membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He 
roomed in South College as a freshman, with a private family as a 

1" A. B., YalP, 1824 ; later professor of ancient languages in Trinity College, Hartford ; 
d. 1842. 

" 28 Am. J. Ed., 208. 

12 Ibid:. 209. 

t" Harnard felt that the great dcfect.s of this school, as compared with the later high 
school, were that girls were excluded, there were no English studii^s above arithmetic, and 
tiic price of tuition was too high for pupils in moderate circumstances. 28 Am. J. 
Ed.. 20i). 

" 28 Am. J. Ed., 209. 



EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATI0:N'. 11 

sophomore, in North Middle College as a junior, and in North CoUego 
as a senior. Most of his vacation he spent at home, occupying his 
room in the second story on the south side of the front door of his 
father's house ; but in the spring vacation of 1828 or 1829 he visited 
Washington and Mount Vernon. In 1828, in New York, he met the 
poet Brj^ant at the table of Michael Burnham, the publisher of the 
Evening Post. In another vacation trip he visited Boston. The 
money he saved from his traveling allowances was spent for books. 
In every city where he stopped the schools were an "object of 
interest as an index and measure of the civilization and culture " of 
the people. As a result of these journeys he wrote in 1828 and 1829 
for the weekly New England Review ^^ articles on New York, tlie 
Boston Latin School, the Worcester Central High School, Dwight's 
Gymnasium at New Haven, and Cogswell and Bancroft's School at 
Northampton. 

He loved long walks, as well as carriage trips. From Monson to 
Hartford he had returned on foot. He made a geological excursion 
from Hartford to Haddam, and walked to New Haven for com- 
mencement. 

While he was in college the great " Bread and Butter Rebellion " 
took place because of the poor quality of the college commons. 
Barnard was sent home for a time because of his part in it. While 
he was in Hartford his sister fell ill, and from her attending physi- 
cian, Dr. Eli Todd, the superintendent of the Comiecticut Retreat, 
" a man of rare genius," Barnard heard of Pestalozzi and caught the 
enthusiasm with which Dr. Todd regarded him. Todd had met 
William McClure, " the first real Pestalozzian in America," and 
passed on from him to Barnard a high opinion of the Swiss edu- 
cator.^" 

A serious-minded youth, Barnard planned a public career for the 
improvement of his country, and received much inspiration from 
reading in 1827 Lord Brougham's address, delivered two years pre- 
vioush'', as lord rector of Glasgow University, in which address the 
following paragraph is found :^'' 

To diffuse useful information; to further intellectual refinement, sure fore- 
runner of moral improvement ; to hasten the coming of the bright day when 
the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering mists, 
even from the base of the great social pyramid — this indeed is a high calling, 
in which the most splendid talents and consiunraate virtue may well press 
onward, eager to bear a part. Let me hope that among the illustrious youths 
whom this ancient Kingdom, famed alike for its nobility and its learning, 
1j;is produced to continue her fame through the ages, there may be found 
some one willing to give a bright example to other nations in a path yet un- 

«28 Am. J. Ed., 227. « N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, p. 5G2, 1S9G. 

" N. E;. Mag., N. S., XIV, 5G5. 



12 LIFE OF HENRY BAKNARD. 

trodden, by taking the lead of liis fellow citizens, not in frivolous amusements, 
nor in the degrading pursuit of the ambitious vulgar, but in the truly noble 
task of enlightening the masses of his countrymen and of leaving his own 
name, no longer encircled, as heretofore, with barbaric splendor, or uttaclied 
to courtly gewgaws, but illustrated by the honors most woi-thy of our rational 
nature, coupled with the diffusion of knowledge and gratefully pronounced 
through all ages by millions, whom his wise beneficence has rescued from 
ignorance and vice. 

President Noah Porter, who graduated from Yale in 1831, wrote 
in 1851 ^^ that " few professed scholars among ns were so thoroughly 
fam'iliar witli the ancient and modern English literature" as Bar- 
nard, and the latter tells us himself that,^® in the junior and senior 
years he devoted himself " diligently to systematic reading in Eng- 
lish literature, practice of English composition, and written and 
oral discussion." He became a ready, pplished, and vigorous speaker. 
The college library was only open to juniors and seniors in those, 
days ; but the libraries of the literary societies were open to all their 
members. Barnard became a member of Linonia. In later life he said 
that " he owes more of his usefulness in public life to the free commin- 
gling of members of different classes, of varied tastes, talents, and 
characters, to the excitement and incentive of the weekly debate, to 
the generous conflict of mind with mind,-° and to the preparation 
for the discussions and decisions of the literary societies with which 
he was connected," than to any other source. 

He wrote a drama for a Linonian Exhibition, which play James 
A. Hillhouse thought worthy of the stage; the fourth act of this 
play is extant and is in blank verse, smooth and correct, but it 
shows little inspiration and is a product of the stmvn iind drang 
period of a man's life. In junior and senior years Barnard was 
librarian of Linonia, of which he also became president, and he ex- 
pended the compensation paid for his services in a donation of 
books to the library. The knowledge of books and of the practical 
management of libraries gained as Linonia's librarian was of great 
service to him in organizing school and other public libraries in 
future years. 

At graduation, Barnard read a dissertation on "The Services 
Rendered to Christianity by Poetry," which is preserved and is of 
the usual academic character. Three years after leaving Yale, on 
June 21, 1833, he wrote down this memorandum: 

On looking over the books this day, I found that I leceived from my father 
from the first of September, 1826, to the tenth of September, 1830, in cash, 
5?997.90. This includes my traveling expenses to and from New Haven, my 
expeditions during vacation, my college bills (which amounted to $493.67) — • 
in fact, all my expenses during college life. However, I left New Haven 

18 N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, 563, 1S96. "1 Am. J. Ed., 663. ^1 Am. J. Ed., 66i. 



- EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION. 13 

with a few bills unsettled, viz, Ms. Durrie & Howe for books, amounting to 
$30 or $40. It is probable that I might have received some money for 
books during vacation which were never entered. 

Throughout his whole life, Barnard kept his love for Yale. Of this 
love, his daughter ^^ in presenting his class records to Yale in 1910, 
wrote : 

Yale never had a more loyal or loving son than my father ; his college friends 
of 70 years ago were his intimate friends till their deaths ; and Yale interests 
were his interests always. It was a bitter disappointment to him that he was 
too ill in June to go to the alumni meeting (his seventieth anniversary), as he 
had done for so many years. The last time he left home was to go to President 
Hadley's inauguration.''^ 

21 Stokes, " Memorials of Eminent Yale Men," I, p. 255. 

"^ A brief life of Barnard was written by Will S. Monroe and published by Bardeen in 
1893 as " Educational Labors of Henry Barnard, a Study in the History of American 
Pedagogy," pp. 35. This book contains Illustrations representing Barnard in 1854, 1870, 
1893, and an undated picture of him in old age. A biographical sketch is found in 
Stokes's " Memorials of Eminent Yale Men," I, 257. Important magazine articles may be 
found in I Am. J. Ed., 663; 28 Am. J. Ed., 208 and 225 (autobiographical) ; 30 Am. J. 
Ed., 200 (reprinting sketch from Duykinck's " Cyclopedia of American Literature," III, 
07, followed by two pages of testimonials) ; John D. Philbrick, " Henry Barnard — the 
American Educator," 4 N. E. Mag., 445 (May, 1886, reprint from Mass. Teacher for 
January, 1858) ; James L. Hughes, " Henry Barnard, the Nestor of American Education," 
N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, p. 560 (1896), with illustrations showing Barnard at the ages of 
43 and 82) ; Samuel Hart, "Henry Barnard," N. E. H. G. Reg., vol. 56, p. 173 (April, 
1902). A short sketch is printed In Steiner's "History of Education in Connecticut," 
p. 45. All statements of fact in this work, not verified by footnotes, are based upon the 
manuscripts in the Barnard collection contained in the Watkinson Library in Hartford. 



Chapter II. 
TEACHING, TRAVEL, AND LAW (1830-1837). 



After grutliiation the enthusiastic, restless youth, taking President 
Day's advice, tauglit school for a year. He was employed in Wells- 
horo, Tioga County, Pa., in an institution which he said was more 
like a district school than an academy.^ He found the practical 
experience gained there valuable, and often said ^ that " we are not 
sure of our knowledge of any subject until we have succeeded in 
making ourselves vividly and thoroughly understood by others on 
that subject.'' He always advised a young man to teach for a year, 
" as the best way to settle in his mind what he had learned," and 
it is interesting to reflect that this year's instruction was the only 
systematic work of teaching in any institution in which Barnard 
ever engaged. He was given $75 by his father, when he started for 
Wellsboro. and noted in his account book, when he reached that 
place: " I ought to have on hand $50.19, but I have only $48.75; so 
that I have lost, been cheated, or forgot to charge $1.44." He agreed 
with a landlady that she should " board, victual, and lodge me " and 
also do his laundr}' — all for $1.50 a week. After a little while he 
records that she raised her price to $2. Before he returned to Hart- 
ford he managed to make a tour to Auburn, Ithaca, Niagara, and 
Ivochestcr. 

When he came home he flung himself into politics as an ardent 
Whig, meanwhile spending part of his time in reading law with 
AA^yllys Hall, of New York, and William H. Hungerford, of Hart- 
ford.^ These legal studies continued until he was admitted to the 
bar in the winter of 1834-35. During these months,^ however, poli- 
tics and law did not occupy all his time. He habitually " devoted 
two hours daily to Kent and Blackstone and the rest of the time to 
Bacon, Gibbon, Warburton, Burke, Barrow, and Taylor, and read 
a little Homer, Virgil, or Cicero, as President Day had advised the 
graduating class." At some time during this period he spent several 
months in Amherst, Mass., gaining an increased love for hill country 
and nature in general, so that he wrote, quoting from Milton's 
Essay on Education : " In these vernal seasons of the year, when 

iMonroo, 10. *1 Am. J. Ed., GC5. * Norton, p. 126. *1 Am. J. Ed., 665. 

14* 



TEACHi:srG, TRAVEL, ATSTD LAW. 15 

the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and snllenness against 
nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicings 
with heaven and earth." 

Barnard's anti-Jackson sentiments led him to make a strong ad- 
dress before the National Republican Young Men of Hartford 
County in 1831, and to go to Baltimore as a delegate to the National 
AVhig Convention. In the next year he addressed the State conven- 
tion, and, taking an active part in the presidential campaign, went 
to Providence to ask Henry Clay to come to Hartford. 

In the winter of 1832-33 Barnard interrupted his legal studies to 
spend January and February in Washington, where he ate in the 
mess of the Connecticut delegation to Congress and listened to the 
" stormy and eloquent debates " of that session.^ From Washington, 
he wrote Dr. John Todd, on February 11, 1833, that he feared that 
Clay had gone too far in his compromise tariff. " Nullification, when 
carried out, is simply treason." The young politician characterizes 
the orators he hears : Webster's " deep, awful voice made my blood 
freeze." Calhoun spoke — 

with inconceivable rapidity and energy and witli a very dictatorial air. His 
language is sinewy and his periods generally short. He is endowed with a 
very acute intellect. His figure is gaunt, his eye bright, or rather keen and 
wild, and his features, when in repose, exhibit great decision of purpose. He 
looks very much careworn. 

Of Jackson's famous Proclamation of January 16, and Calhoun's 
reception of it, Barnard wrote his brother Chauncey : 

This morning the President sent a message to both Houses of Congress 
covering the Proclamation and the Documents of South Carolina. The read- 
ing of it occupied over an hour, and as you will receive it by this mall, I will 
not comment on it. As far as I could see, there was no abandonment of the 
former ground taken by the President, and I am rejoiced at that. I never 
saw a man under such excitement as ]Mr. Calhoun was, when he addressed the 
Senate after the reading of the message. His quick, restless eye glittered like 
fire ; every muscle of his face was rigid, except those about his lips, which 
quivered with suppressed passion. Language seemed to sink beneath him ; ho 
could not find words to express the strength of his feelings. He rose, he said, 
to give a prompt dismissal to the assertion of the President that South Caro- 
lina wanted to break up the Union ; alluded most cuttingly to the doctrine of 
the message that the judiciary must decide on all cases of constitutionality 
(if the tariff law. How is this, that a narrow stream that divides Georgia from 
South Carolina should make all this difference. On one side, the supremacy 
(u' the judiciary was to be maintained, and on the other trampled under foot. 

A month later, on February 16, writing his brother again, Bar- 
Fiard thus described Webster's great speech on the Constitution: 

I write only to-day that the battle has been fought and won. Calhoun con- 
tinued about two hours this morning. The moment he had concluded AVebster 

■ Barnard's .Tonrual letters to his brother Chauncy have recentlj' b^eu printed in the 
Maryland nistorical Magazine for September and December, 11118. 



16 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAED. 

caiislit the last word of his speech and pronounced it in a way that thrilled 
like electricity through the whole house. He spoke about two hours — the 
Senate took a recess till 5 — and he then resumed and spoke three hours longer. 

Upon the whole it was the most overwhelming argument I ever heard or 
expect to hear. It will go down with the Constitution as true exposition of its 
meaning and principles. He ground the whole argument of Calhoun to powder. 
It will really require a microscope to discover the atoms. Calhoun will continue 
the debate, but he might as well bow himself on one of the pillars of the Capitol 
and attempt to pull it down ; he can't do it. 

The closing remarks were splendid, and drew forth an involuntary burst of 
applause, although it had been positively announced that in the case of any 
disturbance the galleries would be cleared immediately. 

He made the blood thrill by his tremulous call on the people to come to the 
rescue. 

The disagreement of Webster and Clfiy over the compromise tariff 
is described in a letter written on February 21 : 

The mail closed last evening before the Senate or the House adjourned. 
Both were the theaters of intense excitement. In the former Webster assailed 
the general principles of Clay's bill in a speech of three hours, full of strong 
and unanswerable argument, carefully avoiding anything of a personal nature. 
Clay replied in a speech of nearly two hours, but did not and could not over- 
throw the position which Webster took. He concluded with the most splendid 
outburst of eloquence I have heard from his lips. It was overwhelming. 
There is a brief sketch in the Intelligencer of this morning of this debate, but 
it gives you no idea of it as heard. I can not believe but what Clay is actuated 
by the purest and loftiest feelings of patriotism, but what he is anxious of 
pouring oil upon the agitations of the country. Clay was in several places 
very unkind and personal toward Webster ; taunted him with his new-born 
zeal for the administration. It was expected that Webster would answer in 
the evening, but the Senate adjourned rather unexpectedly, on the motion of 
Mr. Clay, who was informed that his bill had been introduced by way of 
amendment to Verplanck's bill and passed in the House to a third reading after 
a debate of two hours. This move obviated an objection made by Webster 
that the Senate had no right to originate a revenue bill. The Senate will not 
go on with its present bill, but take up the one from the House as soon as it 
is read a third time, which will probably be to-day. One week ago there was 
little hope that any bill would pass the House this session ; now it is confi- 
dently believed that a tariff, the Land and Enforcing bill, will pass. Calhoun 
is expected to answer Webster to-day. 

Calhoun spoke more than two hours in support of his resolutions, in answer 
to Webster's argument, but he neither supported the one, nor overthrew the 
other. Webster i-eplied in a speech of about one hour, exhibiting but little 
feeling ; he laid a hand of iron, however, upon Mr. Calhoun. Clay's bill passed 
the House this morning and will come up in the Senate to-morrow and pass. 

Barnard's opinions of other lawyers and political leaders are of 
interest. For example, on one day, he — 

walked up to the Capitol, first into the Supreme Court room ; saw there Mr. 
Binney, of Philadelphia, one of the best looking [men] now assembled in 
this city, a large frame and ample brow ; by his side was John Sergeant, a 
much more diminutive man, but very intellectual looking. I had an introduc- 
tion to him, found him eaay and familiar on all subjects ; had a seat assigned 



TEACHING, TRAVEL, AND LAW. 17 

me on the floor of the House to-day, on the ground of reporter, that Is, letter 
writing ; well, that is not a large tax to pay for the privilege of hearing dis- 
tinctly and the opportunity it affords for conversation with the Members. 

]\fr. White, of Louisiana, spoke on the tariff. He is French by birth, full of 
motion, and after he gets a-going is wrapt \ip into thii-d heaven. He uses 
beautiful language and is an acute reasoner, although the brilliancy of his 
fancy blinds as to that. He was followed by Mr. Polk, from Tennessee, a 
would-be leader of the administration in the House. He is a very easy de- 
bater and presented some very strong arguments for reduction — showed from 
information collected by the Secretary of the Treasury that the manufacturers 
of woolens and cottons were making from 15 to 40 per cent. 

Barnard saw something of the social life of the capital. He went 
to a party at the Seaton's on Monday evening. 

I went and was ushered into the front room, where the Mr., IMrs., and the 
Jliss Seatons were ready to receive you. You pass the compliments of intro- 
duction and, if you can sustain the shock, you chat a little with the madam and 
her daughters and then join the dance, which is going on in the adjoining 
room, or the conversation parties, or little knots in the room which opens from 
the aforesaid by folding doors. The dance is kept up by some of the parties 
till 11 or 12 or 1, and always terminates with waltzing — a very graceful but 
voluptuous dance, in which d lovely figure is displayed to the best advantage. 
Through the whole evening, servants are constantly passing wine, lemonade, 
punches, ice creams, cakes of several kinds, jellies and, to end the whole, a 
supper is spread upstairs, and, I should add that, in some of the rooms, card 
tables for amusement are to be found. To these set parties from 150 to 300 
are present, comprising all the great men and lovely women of the city. 

He also attended a reception at the French minister's, and of 
course, went to the White House, thus describing his experience 
there : 

Last evening the President had what is called a drawing-room or levee. You 
understand the arrangements of the Wliite House. Company begins to throng in 
about 7.30, or perhaps a little earlier. You are ushered into a large ante-room, 
where you unrobe yourself and then advance into the reception hall, a round 
room of considerable size, hung round with rich curtains. Near the center of 
this stands the President, who shakes hands with all as they are introduced to 
him by his friends. 

He looks much more firm than I expected to find him. His hair is gray, but 
very thick, and stands up erect on his head. He was dressed in a plain suit of 
black, and there was nothing about him to distinguish him from an ordinary 
old gentleman. He wore glasses and shook his particular friends with both 
hands. Blair and Hill, and other worthies of that stamp, were moving about in 
this room. After this presentation, the company shift for themselves. They 
move off gradually into the East Room, which you know is spendidly furnished. 
The four mirrors, two at each end of the room, are the largest in this country. 
They would cover our room. The rich crimson, golden, and sky-blue hangings 
of the windows produce a grand effect; and the broad strip of cornice i-ound the 
top of the walls is exquisitely wrought. The sides of the room are lined with 
rich, mahogany-cushioned chairs and sofas. In this room, in the course of the 
evening, were assembled more than 2,000 people, and, at any point of time I 
presume there were more than 500 or 600. The company sweep around, arm 
107018°— 19 2 



18 LIFE OF riEXRY LAENAED. 

in arm, all the evening.- In tlie first lialf hour I took my station with two or 
throe friends at one corner, and surveyed the army of beauty and fashion, and 
talent and uf^liness. and shabbiness and dullness, as it poured by in a living 
current. After that I moved round myself in the stream of the dozen counter- 
currents and eddies that set up and swept in from four dillerent directions. At 
one time with a Virginian, at another with a Marylander, and still another with 
an Ohio heauiy on my arm. Think of that. 

The president is extremely penurious. H5 did not furnish the company with 
coffee, or wine, or music; nolhing but his own hard, dry features. He says 
he is not going to be beggared by chccrity. 

The conii)any — and it was an odd assemblage from every section of this coun- 
try — dispersed about 11. 

Friends took him to the convent at Georgetown and to Georgetown 
University, a visit to which latter phvce he thus described : 

We walked out to the college, met a jolly-faced, big-bellied man dressed in a 
cassock (a black gown like, belted ai'ound the body) with a blue cap, fashioned 
like a miter on his head, who proved to be the president, llev. Thomas F. ]\Iul- 
ledy, who invited us into his room, and making known our errand be took ug 
into the library, containing about 15,000 volumes. Saw a manuscript there 
written out on parchment in 1240, nearly 800 years ago, as fresh and as beauti- 
fully written as though it was done yesterday. I could hardly believe my 
senses. Saw different specimens of pi'inting, from its first invention down to 
the i)resent time. Saw what is called the illuminated manuscripts ; that is, 
large letters gilded, as we .should call it. Saw a splendid copy of Dou 
Quixote in 4 volumes, quarto, full of spirited engravings. Went into the 
museum, which contains the largest electrical machine I ever saw. The jolly 
old president tried an experiment with me by putting into my hand a vessel 
charged with gas and then exploding it by connnunicating with the machine. 
Saw a piece of a negro's skin tanned ; it was as thick as calves skin. The 
chapel is all hung round with splendid paintings by old artists and are all 
calculated to impress the great points of Catholic faith upon young minds. 
When we went into the chapel I noticed the face of our worthy guide materially 
elongate as though he was treading upon sacred ground. The sleeping rooms 
extend thi-ough two stories, in which there are 70 beds each, separated by their 
partition of cloth ; the rooms are well aired, however. 

Attached to one of the buildings is an intirmary, in which each complaining 
has a neat I'oom ; there is a common room for amusement and long halls 
to walk in ; then every portion of the building is decorated with paintings 
and engravings, presents from great characters in Europe. The discipline of 
this college is very strict, and were it not for its Catholicism, would be a very 
eligible situation for a youth from 12 to 17. The situation of the college is 
delightful ; I can't imagine anything liner, the grounds around — and they ex- 
tend up a valley a half mile — are beautifvdly laid out into walks, and the 
southern exposure of a hill, embracing 5 or 6 acres, is planted with a vine- 
yard. 

At the beginning of March lie left Washington by steamboat for 
Norfolk, and went thence up the James to Richmond. After a short 
visit there he traveled to Petersburg, whence his friends, the Camp- 
bells, took him to Shirley, the seat of the Carter family. The im- 
pression of the plantation life of a large planter, made on this young 
New Englander, is most interesting. 



TEACHING, TRAVEL, AND LAW. 19 

I think you would delight to visit this region, merely to observe the diifer- 
ence of manners and habits from what you have been accustomed to ; aye, and 
to experience the princely hospitality of the gentle-horn families. For the 
last week I have had a succession of feasts. I accompanied Mrs. Campbell, who 
is one of the most devoted mothers and well-educated women I ever met, and 
her daughtei', Miss Betty, a beautiful, sprightly, accomplished girl, to Shirley, 
the seat of the Carter family. Mrs. Carter is of a high and wealthy family, 
and is one of the plainest, most unassuming women you will meet anywhere. 
Now, that you may understand how we lived there and how one of these large 
establishments is carried on, I will describe a single day there. I will supposa 
al.so that it is a day upon which company is expected, etc. 

When you wake in the morning you are surprised to find that a sei-vant has 
been in, and without disturbing you built up a large fire, taken out clothes and 
brushed them, and done the same with your boots ; brought iji hot water to 
shave, and indeed stands ready to do your bidding. As soon as you are 
dressed, you walk down into the dining room. At 8 o'clock you take your seat 
at the breakfast table of rich mahogany, each plate standing separate on its 
own little cloth. Mr. Carter will sit at one end of the table, and Mrs. Carter at 
the other. Mrs. C. will send you by two little black boys as fine a cup of coffee 
as you ever tasted, or a cup of tea — it is fashionable here to drink a cup of tea 
after coffee. Mr. Carter has a fine cold ham before him of the real Virginia 
flavor ; this is all the meat you will get in the morning, but the servant will 
bring you hot muflins and corn batter cakes every two minutes ; you will find 
on the table also loaf wheat bread, hot and cold corn bread. 

After breakfast, visitors consult their pleasure— iif they wish to ride, horses 
are ready at their command; read, there are books enough in the library; 
v/rite, fire and writing materials are ready in his I'oom. The master or mistr(>s.s 
of the house is not expected to entertain visitors till an hour or two before 
dinner, which is usually at 3. If company has been invited to the dinner, they 
will begin to come about 1 — ladies in carriage and gentlemen on horseback. 
After making their toilet the company amuse themselves in the parlor ; about a 
half hour before dinner the gentlemen are invited out to take grog. When 
dinner is ready (and by the way Mrs. Carter has nothing to do with setting 
the table, an old family servant, who for 50 years has superintended that mat- 
ter, does all that). Mi-. Carter politely takes a lady by the hand and leads the 
way into the dining room, and is followed by the rest, each lady led by a gentle- 
man. Mrs. C. is at one end of the table with a large dish of rich soup, and JUr. 
C. at the other, with a saddle of fine mutton ; scattered round the table — you 
may choose for yourself — ham, beef, turkey, duck, eggs with greens, etc., etc. — 
for vegetables, potatoes, beets, hominy. This last you will find always at 
dinner ; it is made of their white corn and beans and is a very fine dish. After 
you have dined, there circulates a bottle of sparkling champagne. After that, 
off pass the things and the itpper tablecloth, and upon that is placed the des- 
sert, consisting of fine plum pudding, tarts, etc., etc. ; after this come ice cream. 
West India preserves, peaches preserved in brandy, etc. When you have eaten 
this, off goes the second tablecloth, and then upon the bare mahogany table 
are set the figs, raisins, and almonds, and before Mr. Carter are set two or 
three bottles of wine— Madeira, port, and a sweet wine for the ladie.s — he fills 
his glass and pushes them on ; after the glasses are all filled, the gentlemen 
pledge their services to the ladies, and down goes the wine; after the first and 
second glass the ladies retire, and the gentlemen begin to circulate the bottle 
pretty briskly. You are at liberty, however, to follow the ladies as soon as you 
please, who after music and a little chitchat prepare for their ride home. 



20 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

From Petersburg the railroad took Barnard to Belfield, and then 
by stage he went to Halifax and Raleigh. Letters of introduction 
and meetings with chissmates, for the most part southern men who 
had gone to Yale, gave him pleasant entrance into society, and in 
general he was pleased with all he saw. He was the guest for sev- 
eral days of Dr. Caldwell, president of the University of North 
Carolina, at Chapel Hill, and passing through Hillsboro and Greens- 
boro, visited verj^ delightfully a friend. Dr. Ashbel Smith, of Salis- 
bur3\ After seeing the gold mines, not far from there, he went 
on by stage through Charlotte, Lincolnton, and Morganton, to Ashe- 
ville. He found the " scenery very imposing," but thought he had 
not enough time to go farther into the mountains and passing 
through Greenville and Pendleton, S. C, arrived at Augusta, Ga., 
about April 25. Friends here again made his stay a pleasant one, 
but he quickly left by steamboat for Savannah. From Savannah 
he went on to Beaufort, S. C, Avliere he — 

was served with the most delicious luxury I ever met with, and that was a 
dish holding 4 or 5 quarts of large, ripe strawberries, a dish of sweet cream, and 
a bowl of fine white sugar. I never tasted anything so very fine. They have 
had strawberries for three M'eeks, I should have said that peas were up 
at dinner in Savannah and on board the boat yesterday. I got up early on 
Monday morning and went to market. I there saw in the greatest abundance 
green peas, new potatoes (rather small), beets, turnips, etc., blackberries, 
and strawberries ; of the latter I made a purchase and ate them on the spot, 
not thinking that I should have such a luxury as I was blessed with in the 
evening of the same day. This is the first time in my life that I have tasted 
of strawberries and green peas in April. 

Beaufort is a beautiful place, very quiet — no conunercial business going on 
here ; but planters whose estates lie among the islands — the famous Sea Islands 
cotton plantations — have their plantations here. These plantations yield an 
enormous income. Several planters in this district enjoy a fortune, $10,000 to 
$70,000 a year, and yet they complain of hard times. The district of Beaufort 
is probably the richest in the United States, excepting the great commercial 
cities. The climate in the winter season is delightful, resembling that of the 
south of France. 

Another stage ride carried Barnard to Charleston where he re- 
ceived hospitality from Robert Barnwell Smith, Thomas S. Grimke 
and others, and whence he took passage in a sailing vessel for Nor- 
folk. A steamboat thence brought him again to Petersburg, and, 
on May 21 he had returned to Richmond. His final excursion was 
into the Shenandoah Valley. He went first to Charlottesville, where 
he visited the University and Monticello, and then, after a stop at 
Gov. Barbour's, a letter from Grimke gave him hospitality at Mont- 
pelier. It is pleasant to find that President Madison made so strong 
an impression upon the young man. Of the visit he wrote: 

Mrs. Madison came to me. I knew her from the portrait I had frequently 
seen. She is quite a large woman, about 50, and even now extremely beautifu'. 
I presented her the letter ; she invited me in ; conversed with me a while ; 



TEACHING, TRAVEL, AND LAW. 21 

then took the letter to Mr. M. After showing the beauties of tlie prospect 
around, she took nie to Mr. M.'s room, and introduced me. Mr. M. was lying 
on the bed ; he shook me very cordially by the hand ; spoke in a very firm 
voice. I felt as though I v^^as in the presence of a patriarch. He is, you 
know, SO years old ; his eye is bright ; his voice firm ; and his face scarcely 
wrinkled, though his cheeks are fallen. He has been confined to his house for 
nearly two years, by a diffusive rheumatism. His health is very much better. 
He walks about the house a good deal. After conversing with him for nearly 
an hour, I made a move to depart, but they would not hear to that, and, 
come to look, my horse had already been put in the stable. 

I spent the whole evening, until nearly 10 o'clock, in his room, highly en- 
tertained and interested by his conversation. I took a glass of his rich old 
Maderia ; shook hands with him as I went to bed. We did not get up till 
7, and Mr. M. had been to breakfast. Mrs. M. and myself sat down to the 
table ; fine coffee, cold boiled ham, warm and cold bread, and tea constituted 
the repast. Mrs. Madison Is a very interesting lady, and her manners are 
the most sweet, graceful, and dignified I ever saw. She is almost worshiped 
by her friends, and loved by those who see her once. She showed me all over 
the house, the busts of nearly all our great men, four portraits by Stuart. 
The walls of every room are hung with paintings and engravings. 

It rained in the morning and, as the weather was unsettled, they would 
not hear of my leaving. I spent three hours in Mr. M.'s room. He conversed 
with great ease, and expresses himself with inimitable clearness and precision 
on every subject. 

My visit to Mr. Madison was worth the whole expense of my journey. 

On horseback, Barnard then rode to Staunton and Lexington and 
from the latter place made an expedition to the Natural Bridge and 
the Peaks of Otter, both of which greatly impressed him. Turning 
thence northward, he descended into Weyer's Cave and reached 
Harpers Ferry on Sunday, June 8. From that place he journeyed 
through Frederick, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and 
was home in about a week. In those days, the trip was sufficiently 
unusual to give the. traveler a breadth of vision not possessed by the 
average man. 

In the year 1833, Barnard also visited Boston. In July he deliv- 
ered an address before the Connecticut Branch of the American 
Colonization Society in the Centre Church at Hartford ujDon " Edu- 
cation and Liberia,"*' in which address he emphasized the impor- 
tance of schools to Liberia, not only to " its ultimate success, but even 
to prevent it from being swallow^ed up in the barbarism of a conti- 
nent." Some time before this he had become a member of a debating 
club, which met over Humphrey & Sage's store, before which club 
he made his first public speech in favor of educational freedom and 
equality of women.'' Out of this club, largely through Barnard's 
suggestion, came the plan for Hartford's Bicentennial Celebration, 
but the celebration occurred while Barnard was in Europe, and Avas 
marked, according to Barnard, by a "very unhistorical address 



« 28 Am. J. Ed., 228. ' N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, 565, 1806. 



22 LIFE OF KEXRY BAr.:N'ARD. 

by Dr. (Joel) HaAves, who, -with all his oarnestnoss and pnncent dis- 
course, did not have the historic sense." In the beginning of 1835, 
when Daniel AVaclsworth was considering the establishment of tho 
Wadsworth Athenixnnn in Hartford, on similar lines to the Trum- 
bull Gallery' in New Haven, Barnard suggested that the athenanu'.i 
include not merely a galler}' of art, but that the ground floor of 
the building be used for the accommodation of the Hartford Li- 
brary Association, as a library of reference and of circulation and 
a special local collection of books. This suggestion Avas accepted 
and the result was of great permanent value to the city. 

During the academic year 1833-34, Barnard was a student in tho 
Yale Law School. In the summer of 1834® he went to ISIaine and 
took a driving trip from Bath to Bangor. Between his extended 
trijis he took short journeys through Connecticut from time to time, 
equipped Avitli such books as Barber's Historical Collections, Field's 
Middlesex Count}', or Morris's Litchfield Cou]ity. 

The Young Men's Whig Association, of Hartford, asked him to 
make an Independence Day address in 1834. He declined to make 
a political speech, but agreed to make a patriotic one, which vras 
delivered at the North Congregational Church. In the following 
December, he spoke in the North Baptist Church, of Hartford, be- 
fore the Connecticut Peace Society ,"•' showing that the " weight of 
universal, jwpular intelligence," favored "the settlement of inter- 
national differences before war was declared," and demanded '"the 
arbitration of neutral powers before appealing to brute force." 

Early in 1835 Barnard took a Avestern trip, and Rev. T. II. Gal- 
laudet, the noted educator of the deaf, Avrote him from Hartford 
to Cincinnati, urging him to make a profession of faith in Christ and 
to avoid the dangers of travel. Immediately on his return to the 
East, he sailed for Liverpool, on the ship Engl^md, and arrived 
there on April 18, 1835. He visited Chester, Birmingham, Coventry, 
Kenilworth, Warwick, Stratford, Gloucester, Eagland, Monmouth, 
Bristol, Bath, and Salisbury, as 4iis account book shows, and arrived 
in London in time to eat a fish dinner at Greenwich on Ma}' G, and to 
attend a Peace Congress, as a delegate from the American Peace 
Society. While in England's metropolis he attended lectures at tho 
Mechanics' Institute, heard Lord Brougham in the House of Lords, and 
on May 17 listened to Madame Malibran singing in Somnambula, at 
Ivegents'Park. He had provided himself with letters of introduction,^' 
and after he had seen the Epsom Races and had gone to Woolwich, 
Richmond, Brighton, and Chelsea, he started northwards, presenting 
these letters as he found opportunity. He met Lord Brougham, 

* He says 1835, but this is impossible, and no othpr year can be substituted. 

» 28 Am. .T. Ed., 228. 

'" Vide letter of Edmund Smith (Rhett), a classmate, written in Charleston on Mar. 10. 



TEACHING, TRAVEL, AND LAW. 23 

whom he had long admired and discussed with him the best agencies 
for securing universal education as a foundation for good citizenship. 
Others whom he met were Chalmers, Carlyle, De Quincey, Words- 
worth, Lockhart, and Coombe/^ In the day spent with Wordsworth, 
the poet urged him never to lose his love for nature. He visited Hull, 
York, Kendall, Carlisle, Selkirk, Abbotsford, Melrose, Edinburgh, 
the Trossachs, Oban, Staff, C.rinan, Glasgow, and crossed the Irish 
Sea to Belfast and Dublin. Thence, returning by Holyhead, he vis- 
ited Bangor, Oxford, and Windsor, and was again in London on 
July 10. Crossing to the Continent yviih equally rapid pace, he 
visited Antwerp, Brussels, Liege, Aix la Chapelle, Cologne, and 
Bonn, arriving there on August 6. Going up the Ehine, with 
stops at Coblenz and Mainz, he visited Wiesbaden, Frankfort, and 
Heidelberg, where he was on August 27. Thence he traveled through 
Baden to Lucerne, Zug, the Rigi, Sarnen, Interlaken, Bern, Lausanne, 
and Geneva, where he met the Count de Selon. Mr. William C. 
Woodbridge and Dr. Todd had told Barnard of Pestalozzi's methods, 
and Barnard visited him and his school at Yverclun, in Switzerland, 
in which country he also saw Fellenberg and Holfweil, and so in- 
creased his acquaintance with educators. On he went through Brieg, 
Avona, Milan, Brescia, and Venice. Then he turned northward 
through Trent, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Ham- 
burg. Westward then he journeyed to Amsterdam, Leyden, and Rot- 
terdam, and arrived in Paris on December 7. There he lived for some 
time Avith Foi-rest, the actor.^- He had a plan to spend some 
months in Germany in the study of civil law, but news of the failing 
health of his father ^^ caused him to give up this scheme and to de- 
vote himself to the general objects for which travelers seek. He 
enjoj^ed the scenery, visited the picture galleries, and, going south 
through Marseille, reached Italy again at Leghorn. He traveled 
through Genoa, Pisa, and Florence to Eome, wdiere he met Baron 
Bunsen, and, finally, he embarked for America at Naples, on May 10, 
1836. On his return to Hartford in July, he found his father ill and, 
from that time, until his father's death in March, 1837, his home 
duties prevented him from active correspondence with friends. He 
watched by 'his father's bedside a portion of every night and day and 
occupied his leisure in reading about the countries he had visited. 
As a result of the " grand tour, more than ever," he was " deeply 
impressed with the necessity on every citizen of cultivating and 
"practicing a large public spirit and of basing all our hopes of per- 
manent prosperity on universa l eclucati on.^^ 

11 N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV. 50.5. is 1 Am. .J. Ed.. 600. 

12 N. E. Mag. N. S., XIV, 565. " 1 Am. J. Ed., GG6. 



Chapter III. 

MEMBER OF THE CONNECTICUT LEGISLATURE 

(1837-1840). 



At 2G years of age Barnard had not yet found his career. He had 
rare advantages. His personality was pleasing, his bearing dignified, 
his culture remarkably varied. To a collegiate education at Yale 
and a legal training he had added a remarkable knowledge of litera- 
ture. In a time when men did not travel far he had already been a 
wide traveler, having seen most of the United States east of tlie 
Mississippi and having made the grand tour of Europe. At his 
father's death he had inherited a small competence. He had achieved 
some little reputation as a speaker, manifested considerable interest 
in education, and had been admitted to the bar. "N^^iither should ho 
bend his efforts? To politics, education, or to law? 

While he was thus balancing the matter, without effort of his part 
the Hartford voters chose him in 1837 as one of their two representa- 
tives in the general assembl3^ He was the youngest man they had 
ever chosen, and their continued confidence showed itself by reelect- 
ing him yearly until 1840. Ho was well equipped by nature and 
training for the office. Horace Mann said a few years later that 
Barnard was a man possessing "fine powers of oratory, wielding a 
ready and able pen, animated by a generous and indomitable spirit, 
willing to spend and be spent in the cause of benevolence and hu- 
manity." ^ 

At first thought the election of Barnard to the general assembly 
would have seemed to direct his career toward politics. He took 
interest in many affairs, such as the education of the deaf and blind, 
the completion of the geological survey, the amelioration of the condi- 
tion of the poor, the care of the insane, the improvement of jails, the 
incorporation of libraries.^ On May 23, 1837, in his first session, he 
delivered an address which was printed in pamphlet fonn upon a 
proposed amendment to the constitution of the State limiting the 
tenure of office of the judges of the supreme and superior courts. 
This speech, which shows great learning and historical research, 
strongly opposes the assignment of fixed terms of office to the judi- 

^ 4 N. E. Mag., 445, from Mass. Teacher for January, 1858. * Monroe, 11. 

24 



MEMBER OF THE CONNECTICUT LEGISLATURE. 25 

ciary, instead of appointing them for life or good behavior. Barnard 
maintained that the change would virtually destroy the efficiency of 
the judiciary as a separate and coordinate department of government, 
and that, after such a change, neither would it be possible to secure 
good judges, nor would the judges longer be a restraint upon the 
legislature. 

Ouce introduce this seminal principle of mischief Into our constitution, 
break down the independence of the judiciary, let this evil spread through the 
land, and farewell forever to the pure, firm, and enlightened administration of 
laws. The foul spirit of party will enter into your jury box and dictate its 
verdict. It will clothe itself in the ermine of the judge and pronounce his deci- 
sions, and the temple of justice that has thus far been preserved from its unholy 
touch will be utterly and forever deserted. 

Barnard was also active in Hartford's municipal life during this 
period. The Connecticut Historical Society had been founded in 
1825, but had become inactive, because of the removal of the Rev. 
Thomas Bobbins and others of its founders. Barnard made the first 
suggestion for a revival of the society,^ and conducted all the " in- 
cipient correspondence concerning the matter." When the reorgan- 
ization took place in June, 1839, Barnard was made corresponding 
secretary. In his efforts to secure members, he read a circular, ask- 
ing men to join the society, before the Connecticut State Lyceum, at 
its meeting in Middletown on November 13, 1839, and then distrib- 
uted it in slip form in the Connecticut School Journal. He con- 
tinued as corresponding secretary until May, 1846, and, in later 
years, he served the society as president, after the death of Hon. 
Tliomas Day, from 1854 to 1860, and as vice president, from 1863 to 
1874. To him, also in large measure, was due the securing of Rev. 
Dr. Thomas Bobbins as librarian for the society. For the Young 
Men's Institute, Barnard secured the valuable collection of books 
belonging to the Hartford Library, which went out of existence about 
the same time. The general assembly met in New Haven in May, 
1838, and during its sessions* Barnard returned to Hartford to read 
a paper before the American Lyceum, which was then meeting in 
that city at the invitation of the Rev. T. H. Gallaudet. The interest 
aroused by that lecture was largely instrumental in the founding of 
the Young Men's Institute, of which Barnard was chosen first presi- 
dent. 

We have no record that he ever spent much time in the practice of 
law, but he was still somewhat occupied with literature, and, in 1838, 
w-as asked by Rev. J. G. Palfrey, the editor of the North American 
Review, to prepare therefor a review of Hinman's work on Con- 
necticut. 



»1 Am, J. Ed., 663. « 28 Am. J. Ed., 229. 



26 LIFE OF HENRY BAKNARD. 

He found time to travel somewhat outside of the State, ai.d, in 
ISoS, called on President Van Buren, to ask him to secure school 
statistics in the Census of 1840, In after life he was proud of saying 
that ho had known all the Presidents except three. His political life 
was, however, soon ended. He took no part in the canvass for the 
l)residency in 1840, and. among his papers, I found no record of his 
even attending a political meeting after this time except that, in 
1843, he listened to Webster in Saratoga and, at some time, to Gen. 
Taylor in New Orleans. 

Plis career had been determined for him and the educational in- 
terest was to dominate the remainder of his life. A Hartford man 
who knew Barnard in his later years said that his influence in the 
community in which he lived, as well as in the State and the Nation, 
Avas analogous to that of yeast, that he brought among his fellow 
men new ideas, which produced such fermentation that the old self- 
satisfied conditions could no longer continue, but that men must 
press on to new and improved positions. The comparison is an apt 
one, and the observant eye and fertile "mind of the young man caused 
him to send forth, as we have already seen, many new ideas among 
the people. This is especially true of the period in his life of whicli 
we now write. Tn 1837, Judge George Sharpe, of Abingdon, who 
had been in the previous legislature, but was not in this one, asked 
Barnard to introduce for him two measures in which he was in- 
terested. One of these was a bill for the more thorough local visita- 
tion and inspection of the schools by paying the school visitors, and 
the other was a resolution to secure from the comptroller official in- 
formation as to the common schools of the State. Barnard gave aid 
in vain, for the measures were not passed.® In the next year Barnard 
widened the scope of these measures and introduced a bill " to pro- 
vide for the better supervision of the common schools." The bill 
was referred^ to the joint select committee on education, and, when 
reported favorably by them, the rules were suspended and the bill 
passed unanimously to a third reading on a motion made by R. M. 
Sherman. After the bill passed the house, the senate also passed it 
unanimously and the governor signed it. The passage was insured 
by Barnard's faithful efforts and especially by a speech which he 
made in the house.'' For a month before the assembly met, Barnard 
had been occupied in visiting schools and conferriiiig with parents 
and teachers.^ FolloAving the line of least resistance, he had provided 
for a board whose whole duty^ "may be summed up in the com- 



»54th Meeting Am. Inst. lustniolion, 112; 2S Am. J. Ed., 227; 22 Am. J. Ed., 339. 

' Monroe, 11. 

» 1 Am. .T. Ed., 6G0. 

«r> Am. J. Ed., 152. 

» Ropt. of U. S. CommLs. of Ed., 189G-97, I, p. 779. 



/' 



MEMBER OF THE CONNECTICUT LEGISLATURE. 27 

prehensive title: A ministry of education in behalf of the people's 
common school under the direction of the State/' but " without power 
to make any change in the system." 

To prepare men's minds for his bill, he had addressed a circular 
describing his intention to each member elected. The bill provided 
for a State board of commissioners of common schools, consisting of 
eight members, with a secretary of the board to be chosen by them. 
He had found that '' any measure, calculated to disturb the relations 
of political parties, by giving to the minority the slightest chance 
for crying increased taxation or that suggested a suspicion of dimin- 
ishing the dividends of the school fund, had not the slightest chance 
of success." He had accordingly framed his bill so as to avoid 
\ shipwreck upon these j)oints. He felt that conditions in the State 
we^ very bad : 

/Our district school had sunk into a deplorable condition of iuefllciency and 
no longer deserved the name of common in its best sense, that there was not 
one educated family in a hundred that relied on the district school for the 
Instruction of their children, and if they did go, the instruction was of the 
most elementary character. All the higher education of the State was given 
in denominational academies and irresponsible private schools of every degree 
of demerit.*" ^^^ 

It has been said with much truth "the radical difficulty in Con- 
necticut was that, for a long time, the educational training had been 
SAvitched off from the direct track of a public interest, dealt with in 
the forum of the town meeting, to the side track of a school society.^ ^ 

Already had Barnard conceived the idea of writing a book upon 
the school systems of Europe, which he had studied on his travels. 
Unusually well equipped for the advocacy of any forward step in his 
speech before the house, he pointed out the " gradual departure " of 
Connecticut " from the fundamental principles of the old system, as 
well as our failure to meet, by better educated teachers and a more 
scientific cause of instruction, the exigencies of increased population 
nnd wealth and of diversified industries." ^^ He also discussed the 
question of attendance; of the itinerating and nonprofessional class 
of teachers ; of the absence of constant, intelligent, and skilled inspec- 
tion; and of inadequate and defective modes of support. In this 
speech ^^ Barnard proclaimed the great truth that : 

It is idle to expect good schools until we have good teacliers. * * * "With 
better teachers will come better compensation and more permanent employ- 
ment. But the people will be satisfied with such teachers as they have, until 
their attention is directed to the subject and until we can demonstrate the 
necessity of employing better and show how they can be made better, by appro- 
priate training in classes and seminaries established for that specific purpose. 

i"28 Am. J. Ed., 227. 

"Kept. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1800-97, I, p. 777. 

^2 28 Am. J. Ed., 228. 

^ 1 Am. J. Ed., 660 ; 10 Am. J. Ed., 24. 



28 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

Barnard definitely dedicated himself to the work of school im- 
provement in this speech, saying : 

Here in America at least, no man can live for himself alone. Individual 
happiness is here bound \ip with the greatest good of the greatest number. 
Every man must at once make himself as good and as influential as he can and 
help at the same time to make everybody about him and all whom he can 
reach better and happier. The common school should not longer be regarded as 
common, because it is cheap, inferior, and attended only by the poor and those 
who are indifferent to the education of their children, but common as the light 
and the air because its blessings are open to all and enjoyed by all. That day 
will come. For me, I mean to enjoy the satisfaction of the labor ; let who will 
enter into the harvest." 

From that dedication of his life to education, Barnard never re- 
ceded. He had the satisfaction of abundant labor, and before he 
died he enjoyed the first fruits of the harvest, upon which the people 
still feed and are filled. In all the &*chools of the State the teacher 
lacked knowledge ^^ and " practical ability to make what he does 
know available"; while he had never studied the "creative art" of 
the teacher. Barnard believed that publicity given to these facts 
would cause the eventual establishment of a normal scliool, and then, 
as always urged, " Let us have light upon the w^hole subject of 
teachers."^'' In the next w^eek, after the adjournment of the house, 
as president of the Hartford Young Men's Institute Barnard ex- 
plained the plan of operation of that organization to an audience 
assembled in the Center Church on the evening of Independence Day. 
So impressive did this address ^^ prove that he repeated it in the 
Fourth Church in Hartford, and in Ncav Haven,^^ Xorwich, New 
London, Middletown, and NorAvalk, developing it into a lecture on 
the moral and educational wants of cities. In this form the pro- 
gram covered five points: The first was the establishment of a 
house of reformation for juveniles; then followed the care of the 
poor, by furnishing employment, instead of indiscriminate charity, 
and by personal intercourse " awakening in their minds a self respect 
and force of thought to bear up and rise above the adverse circum- 
stances of their lot." These ideas foreshadowed some of the im- 
portant features of the modern charity organization societies. He 
also advocated the erection of model tenements. His thk-d sugges- 
tion too, was one followed out in the twentieth century, namely, the 
giving the people " more abundant means of innocent and rational 
amusements." Fourthlj^, Barnard urged the establishment of graded 
schools, as follows: (a) Primary schools, with the "teachers all fe- 

" Rcpt. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, I, 777 : 4 N. E. Mag., 446. 
1= I Am. J. Ed., 668. 

^" If the bill was .idoptod and sustained for 10 years he said there would be a normal 
school established within the time. 
"28 Am. J. Ed., 229. 
^ Before the Young Men's Institute on Dec. 23, 1841. 



MEMBER OF THE CONNECTICUT LEGISLATURE. 29 

males and the children below 8 years of age," which schools should 
largely be supervised by the mothers of the children; (5) secondary 
schools, comprising children from 8 to 12 years of age; (c) high 
schools for boys and for girls with education preparatory to the 
pursuits of commerce, trade, manufactures, and mercantile life; (d) 
departments for colored children; (e) evening schools for those em- 
ployed during the day; (/) libraries containing also maps, globes, 
etc., each library to be sent around to each school of its class in turn. 
This last suggestion was a remarkable adumbration of the modern 
traveling library. 

The last of the items in Barnard's program for the progressive 
city was the establishment therein of lyceums, each of Wliich should 
contain: (a) A library, embracing the Avidest range of reading for 
all classes, except the young who were to be supplied from the school 
library; (b) classes for- debates and reading compositions; (c) 
classes for mutual instruction; (d) popular lectures separately given 
and also in courses; (e) collections in natural history; (/) a mu- 
seum; (g) an art gallery. The comprehensiveness of this scheme is 
quite remarkable, as also is its emphasis upon the public library as > 
an essential, integral part of public education. y 

In 1889 Barnard was again chosen as a representative from Hart- 
ford to the general assembly and by that time he had also become 
secretary of the board of common school commissioners. He pre- 
sented their report to the housCj with a recommendation that an 
appropriation of $5,000 be made, to be applied by the board of com- 
missioners of common schools in promoting the qualifications of 
teachers. To this amount he hoped that considerable additions 
w^ould be made by towns and individuals. As chairman of the com- 
mittee of the house to wdiich the bill was referred, Barnard set forth 
the plan which he intended to recommend to the board of commis- 
sioners for common schools in the use of the sum appropriated, so 
as to improve the largest possible number of teachers, drawing some 
from every town and, in the course of three years, disseminating 
through all the schools of the State the better views and methods, 
of teaching gained. The towns in each county should make pro- 
posals to furnish accommodations for the teachers assembled in this 
class and provide board gratuitously, or at reduced prices, for a 
limited period. The teachers should be invited to meet in spring or 
autumn for — 

mutually considering and solving, tinder the guidance of those selected to 
conduct the exercises, the difficulties which each had encountered in the ele- 
mentary studies, or in the organization, class instruction, and discipline of the 
schools, and to receive from experienced teachers and educators their views on 
these topics, as extensively as the length of the session should allow. 



30 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

On tlie other hand, tlie board sho\ild promise to secure the services 
of eminent practical teacliers, in the several studies of the common 
school and in the science and art of teaching, and should also pro- 
vide a course of evening lectures, calculated to interest and instruct 
l^arents and the public generally, which lectures should be opeh and 
free to all. He reiterated the need of better teachers: 

Good teachers will make better schools, and schools made better by the 
labors of good teachers is [sic] the best arj-uiiient which can be addressed to 
I he community, in favor of improved schoolhouses, a judicious selection of a 
uniform system of textbooks in tlie schools of the same society, of vigilant and 
intelligent supervision, and liberal jippropriations for school purposes. * * * 
Every good teacher will himself become a pioneer and a missionary in the 
cause of educational improvement. 

The amount asked would not be adequate to train teachers. It 
will not establish a normal school, but may bring together all 
teachers, for a week or more, " to attend a course of instruction on 
the best methods of school teaching and government." Teachers 
should be encouraged to form associations " for mutual improvement, 
the advancement of their common profession, and the general im- 
provement of education and the schools of the State." They are the 
natural guardians of this great interest of the districts for all school 
purposes, to provide books for poor children, and to supply the 
schools with libraries and apparatus. 

Barnard thoroughly appreciated the importance of public libraries. 
The earliest library connected with a common school in Connecticut, 
selected in reference to teachers and pupils as well as to the graduates 
of the school, Avas founded by him. The first legislation suggested 
on the subject Avas that proposed in his report for 1839 and embodied 
in the bill he then introduced, in which a tax for library purposes 
was provided. He offered to gi^-e a certain number of books for a 
library in any district Avhich should build a schoolhouse of Avhich ho 
approved. In an elevated strain he asked : 

AVho can estimate the healthful stimidus which would be communicated to 
the youthful mind of the State, the discoveries which genius would make of its 
.own wondrous powers, the vicious habits reclaimed or guarded against, the 
light which would be thrown over the various pursuits of society, the blessings 
and advantages which would be carried to the fireside and the workshops, the 
business and the bosoms of men, by the establishment of well-selected libra- 
ries, adapted not only to the older children in schools, but to the adults- of 
both sexes, and embracing works on agriculture, manufactures, and the various 
employments of life. 

In 1841, Barnard praised New York's school library system. He 
regretted that Connecticut had none, and recommended that a trav- 
eling librarj^ be placed in each school society, the books being con- 
tained in as many ca.ses as there were school districts, and each case 
being allowed to remain six months in every district in turn; " at least 



MEMBER OF THE COTTFECTICITT LEGISLATURE. 31 

they are the cooperators with parents, in this work of edncatini>- 
the rising generation to take the phice of that which is passing oft 
the stage." If the appropriation be granted, it " shoukl create in 
teachers a thfrst for something higher and better than a temporary 
course of instruction, and the establishment of an institution for the 
professional education and training of teachers would follow.'' Bar- 
nard was hopeful and exclaimed: "Though the prospect is dark- 
enough, I think I can see the dawning of a better day on the moun- 
tain tops." His prophetic eye looked forward to a time Avhen 
" young children will be placed universally under the care of accom- 
plished female teachers; female teachers will be emploj^ed in every 
grade of schools as assistants and, in most of our country districts, 
as school principals," in " new, attractive, and commodious struc- 
tures." Town or society high schools will be established. In his 
lofty conception, teachers were '• a chosen priesthood of God." Car- 
ried away by his fervent eloquence, the house, many of whose mem- 
bers had been teachei-s or school officers, passed the appropriation, 
but it was lost in the senate for want of explanation, and the subject. 
was referred back to the commissioners for further consideration. 
Barnard was more successful at the same session in advocacy of an j 
act codifying and improving the school law of the State, which 
statute passed almost unanimously and was almost the only one of 
the session not a party one. It was framed by a committee equally 
divided politically.^'' This law e-nabled school societies to establish— 
schools of different grades, without reference to districts, and to dis- 
tribute the school money among the districts according to the actual 
attendance of children at a school for period of six months in each 
year. It empowered school visitors to prescribe rules for the man- 
agement, studies, books, and discipline of the school and to appoint 
a subcommittee to visit the schools, members of which subconunittee 
were to be paid by the society. School districts were allowed to unite 
for the purpose of maintaining a gradation of schools and to tax 
the property. 

»1 Am. J. Ed.. 676. 



'(j 



Chapter IV. 

SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT BOARD OF COMMIS- 
SIONERS OF COMMON SCHOOLS (1838-1842). 



The greatest contribution ^ yet made by the United States to the 
uplifting- genius of the world's progress was b^-t-he establishment of 
the free public school supported by general taxation and directed by 
the State, and Horace Mann and Henry Barnard were " the men to 
whom America owes the organization of the public-school system." 
This is a high claim to make, but there is much to support it. The 
educational career of these two men began in adjoining States almost 
at the same time. In 1837 Mann left the presidency of the Massa- 
chusetts senate to become secretary of the board of education just 
then established, and in 1838 Barnard w^as chosen as secretary of the 
Connecticut Board of Commissioners for Commpn Sgllools. The 
board was established largely through his efforts,^ and, as was nat- 
ural, the governor appointed him as one of its members. When the 
board met for organization, Barnard nominated and secured the 
election as the secretary of Rev. Dr. T. H. Gallaudet, founder of the 
American Asylum for the Deaf. Barnard himself had intended to 
begin the practice of law and had been q;ffered a p.artnership by 
Willis Hall, his former law instructor, ^wdio had become attorney 
general of New York,^ Gallaudet, howi^ver, declined the position,^ 
on the ground that "more of the youthful strength and enthu- 
siasm " were required therefor " than can be found in an invalid 
and a man of 50 years of age," as he then was. No other person had 
been considered as the secretary. Gallaudet suggested Barnard for 
the place and urged his selection upon the board.* Barnard was 
just 27 years old and had all the " 3^outhful strength and enthusiasm " 
that could have been desired, but he felt that he might be criticized 
for taking office under a statute which he had been influential in 

1 Kindergarten Magazine for 1897, article of James L. Hughes. 

2 Monroe, p. 13. Willis Hall (1801-18G8) graduated from Yale in 1S24, studied law in 
New York and Litchfield, was admitted to the bar in 1827, practiced in Mobile, Ala., from 
1827 to 1831 and then in New York Cit.v. He was elected to the assomblj' in 1887 and 
1842 and was attorney general of the State in 1838. He afterwards lectured in the law 
school at Saratoga. 

3 Am. Ed. Biog., p. 106. 
* 1 Am. J. Ed., 060. 

32 



SECEETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD, 33 

passing. However, he finally yielded his scruples and gave up his 
intention to practice law at the earnest solicitations of Gallaudet 
and of the other members of the board, and accepted the office for 
six months, until the plans of the board matured. He agreed to 
serve without compensation, save the payment of his expenses. At 
the end of the six months, and also at the end of the first and second 
3'ears, Ire- offered his resignation, but was induced to withdraw it. At 
the end bf the third year he induced the board to elect Waldo ^ as 
his successor, because his relations to both political parties would 
rescue the action of the board from any suspicion of its having a 
political character. Waldo declined, and urged Barnard to continue 
in office, saying: "If jou fail, no man can succeed." After the 
fourth year, the board was legislated out of office, and Barnard 
w^rote, with undue discouragement : " I failed." In reality, his term 
of office was far from a failure. Gallaudet had told him, when he 
took the place, that difficulties would — 

probably not entirely defeat, but must inevitably postpone its success. But 
never mind, tlie cause is worth laboring and suffering for, and enter on your 
work with a manly trust that the people will yet see its transcendent im- 
portance to them and their children to the latest posterity and that God will 
bless an enterprise fraught with so much good to every plan of local benevo- 
lence." 

The Ecv. Mr. Mayo gave a discriminating judgment upon Bar- 
nard's Avork, as follows :' " Deficient in the great administrative power 
of Horace Mann, not always accurate in his knowledge of men and 
reading of public opinion, not indeed a politician, but a splendid 
scholar and an earnest advocate of the best theories of education be- 
fore the country, his entire educational fabric was demolished on the 
advent of an opposition party to power in 1842;" but he had, by 
that time, " gathered together a common school public which ever 
after could be relied on to further anj^ reform of which a common- 
wealth, so conservative and cautious, is capable." 

The first meeting of the board was held on June 15 and 16, 1838, 
soon after its members were appointed. It is significant that there 
was no representative of Yale College on the board, and that Bar- 
nard's educational plans at this period of his life did not include any 
integration of the school with the college in one educational system 
nor any centralization similar to the powers of the university regents 
in New York State.^ In addition to Barnard, the members of the 
board were Gov. William W. Ellsworth, Seth P. Beers, the commis- 

8 54th Meeting Am. Inst. Instruction, 113. Loren Pinckney Waldo, of Tolland. 

BAm. Ed. Biog., p. 107. 

'Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, 182. 

8 Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, I, p. 779. 

107018°— 19 3 



34 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

sioner of the public school fund, the well-beloved President Wilbur 
Fiske, of Wesleyan Universit}', John Hall, of Ellington, Andrew T. 
Jiidson, of Canterbury, Charles W. Rockwell, of Norwich, Rev. 
Lebnid Howard, of Meridcn, Ilawley Olmsted, of Wilton, and William 
P. Burrali, of Canaan." The duties of the secretary were: (1) To 
ascertain, by inspection and correspondence, the condition of the 
scliools; (2) to prepare an abstract of information, with plans for 
the organization and administration of the school system, which 
plans might be considered by the board and by the legislature; (3) 
to attend and address meetings of parents, teachers, and school 
officers in each county, as well as local meetings; (4) to edit and 
superintend the publication of a journal devoted to common-school 
education; (5) to increase in any particular way the information 
and intelligence of the community as to the subject of education.^'' 

In 1850 Barnard wrote that : 

So far back as I have any recollection the cause of true education, of the 
complete education of every human being without regard to the accidents of 
birth or fortune, seemed most worthy of the concentration of all my powers and, 
if need be, of any sacrifice of time, money, and labor, which I might be called 
on to make in its behalf." 

With such a spirit of consecration, Barnard accepted his office and, 
with such a steady consecration of all that he had and was, he con- 
tinued throughout his long life. Horace Mann, his great contempo- 
rary educator, said that Barnard — ^^ 

entered upon his duties with unbounded zeal. He devoted to their discharge 
his time, talents, and means. The cold torpidity of the State soon felt the sensa- 
tions of returning vitality. Its half suspended animation began to quicken with 
a warmer life. Much and most valuable information was diffused. Many 
parents began to appreciate more adequately what it was to be a parent; 
teachers were awakened ; associations for mutual improvement were formed ; 
system began to supersede confusion ; some salutary laws were enacted ; all 
things gave favorable augury of a prosperous career ; and it may be further 
aflirmed that the cause was so aduiinistered as to give occasion of ^offense to no 
one. The whole movement was kept aloof from political strife. All religious 
men had reason to rejoice that a higher tone of moral and religious feeling was 
making its way into .schools, without giving occasion of jealousy to the one-sided 
views of any denomination. r>ut all these auguries wei'e delusive; in an evil 
hour the whole fabric was overthrown. 

In this fashion, the great Massachusetts educator spoke of Barnard 
and of his work during the four years while he was secretary of the 
Connecticut School Board. In 1846 he called Barnard a "distin- 
guished and able friend of the common school." 

" 1 .\m. J. Ed., 669. 
" Monroe, p. IS. 
11 1 Am. .T. Ed., G60. 

" In Uoston, .Tuly 4. 1842, quoted from Mass. Scb. Jour., by J. D. rhilbrick in 1858, 4 
N. K. Mag., 447. Mouioe, p. 15. 



SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 35 

Barnard cherished a laudable ambition :^^ 

As a native-born citizen of Connecticut, as one wliose roots are in her soil, 
I am ambitious of being remembered among those of her sons whose names 
the State will not willingly let die because of some service, however small, 
done to the cause of humanity in my day and generation, but I am more 
desirous to deserve at the end of life the nameless epitaph of one in whom man- 
kind lost a friend and no man got rid of an enemy. 

With such desires and purposes Barnard drafted an address to 
the people of Connecticut," which was signed by the members of 
the board, calling for the cordial support of the public. If this sup- 
port should be given, the board looked " forward to the most cheer- 
ing results." The board felt that its duties M^ere of " no common 
magnitude," although it had been clothed with no official authority 
to make — ■ 

the least alteration in the system of common schools now in existence or to 
add to it in its various modes of action anything in the way of law or regula- 
tion of their own devising.'^ Whenever it is found expedient to attempt this 
the people alone will do it through the constitutional organ of their power, the 
legislature, which they themselves create. The powers, if they may bQ so 
called, of the board of commissioners of common schools, are simply to ascer- 
tain for the information of the legislature, at its annual sessions, and of the 
citizens generally what has been done and is now doing in the common schools 
and in the whole department of popular education throughout the State and 
to suggest any improvement which from their own inquiries and reflections, 
aided by the experience of the community around them, may prove to be safe 
and practicable. 

Other States were awakening to the importance of education. 

Surely, then, Connecticut, whose very name calls up before the mind the 
whole subject of common-school instruction and popular intelligence, will at 
least be anxious to know where she stands in this onward march of intellect, 
whether she is fully keeping pace with it and whether she is sustaining the 
elevated rank in this respect which she has for a long time past felt herself 
authorized to claim and which has not been denied her. 

The State " o ught t o know^ and that speedily, the actual condition 
of her common schools. * * * But she can not know this without 
a^aithful inquiry into the state of the schools," such as had not been 
made. No other organization than this board " can ever eifect this 
important object." 

After this skillful and tactful introduction, the address continues, 
stating that, if the " result of the inquiry should show that the system 
may be improved, these desirable changes may then be made. Facts are 
what we want, and the sooner Ave can procure them the sooner we shall 
be able to carry forward, with efficiency and increased success, our sys- 
tem of common school instruction, whether it remains in its present 

13 1 Am. J. Ed., 670. 

" Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 189G-97, I, 779. 

» 1 Am. J. Ed., G70. 



36 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

form or receives some partial modification. In carrying out its 
plans, the board will be obliged to rely very much upon its secretary, 
■who is expected to visit all parts of the State. Circulars of inquiry 
as to facts were soon to be issued and county conventions were to be 
held, from which a " vigorous im2:)ulse to the cause of common school 
instruction" is expected. A semimonthly magazine would be pub- 
lished, as an organ of communication between the board and the 
people; to give information as to Avhat is done, here and elsewhere, 
in regard to popular education; to assist in forming, encouraging, 
and bringing forward good teachers; publish the laws of Connecti- 
cut as to schools; to aid school committees; to give the means of as- 
certaining deficiencies and suggesting remedies; to "excite and keep 
alive the spirit of efficient and prudent action on the subject of popu- 
lar education." The address concludes, in an elevated strain, thus: 

The board, then, looking first to Almighty God and inviting their fellow citi- 
zens to do the same for his guidance and blessing in the further prosecution 
of their labors, feel assured that the public will afford them all needed encour- 
agement and aid. Let parents and teachers, school committees and visitors, 
the clergy and individuals in official stations, the conductors of the public jour- 
nals and the contributors to their columns, the friends of education generally, 
the children and youths, with their improving minds and morals, the females, 
with their gentle yet powerful influences, and all, with the good wishes and 
fervent supplications at the throne of grace, come up to the work. Then will 
we unitedly indulge the hope that wisdom from above will direct it, an en- 
lightened zeal carry it forward, a fostering Providence insure it success, and 
patriotism and religion rejoice together in its consummation.^" 

Let us now briefly review the history of the schools in Connecticut 
down to 1838 and see what their condition was then found to be." 
The earnest Puritan leaders of the two colonies which formed Con- 
necticut, through their desire that all should be able to read the 
Scriptures, were advocates of universal education from their first 
settlement. The Connecticut Code of 1650, following the example of 
that of Massachusetts Bay, contained a provision that the selectmen 
of every town must see to it that all men " endeavor to teach, by 
themselves or others, so much learning as may enable them perfectly 
to read the English tongue and knowledge of the capital laws " and 
that all " masters of families do, once a week at least, catechise their 
children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion." 
It was clear to them, that " one chief project of that old deluder, 
Satan, was to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." 
They were not willing that learning should " be buried in the grave 
of our forefathers in church and commonwealth," and so they re- 
quired every township of 50 householders to have a teacher of read- 

1* The inquiries sent out by the board are printed In 1 Am. .T. Ed., 686. 
^' This review is based on Steincr's History of Education in Connecticut, U. S. Bu. of 
Ed., Cue. Inf., 1893, No. 21, pp. 17-i3. 



SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 37 

ing and writing, to be paid by the parents of tlie scholars, and 
eA^ery town of 100 families to " set up a grammar school, the masters 
thereof being able to instruct youths, so far as they may be fitted 
for the university." The New Haven jurisdiction was no less 
urgent in its code of 1656 : 

That all parents and masters do duly endeavor, either by their own ability 
and labor, or by improving such schoolmaster or other helps and means as 
the plantation doth aiford, or the family may conveniently provide, that all 
their children and apprentices, as they grow capable, may, through God's 
blessing, attain at least so much as to be able to read the Scriptures and other 
good and profitable printed books in the English tongue. 

In each town of the jurisdiction, it was ordered, in 1657, that a 
school be " set up and maintained," one-third of the teacher's salary 
being paid by the town and two-thirds by the tuition fees. The 
people had contributed " college corn " to Harvard. The desire of 
Eev. John Davenport's heart, manifested as early as 1647, to have a 
college in New Haven, was fulfilled when the Collegiate School of 
Connecticut, founded in Branford in 1701, and opened in Saybrook 
under the rectorship of the minister of Killingworth, was removed 
to Yale College in New Haven in 1716. Public schools for whites 
and for Indians were encouraged throughout the colonial period and 
some gifts were received for this purpose from individuals, like 
those of Gov. Edward Hopkins for grammar schools in Hartford 
and New Haven. Private schools were discouraged at first; but, 
toward the close of the colonial period, academies began to spring 
up here and there. 

The control of schools lay in the town until 1794, when a school 
district, which was a subdivision of a town, was allowed to lay a 
tax for a schoolhouse and to collect it from tlie taxpayers of the 
district. The movement toward decentralization progressed rapidly. 
In 1795 the organization of school societies was allowed within towns, 
which societies were usually geographically coextensive with the 
ecclesiastical societies, into which the larger and more populous 
towns w^ere becoming divided. This system differed from that of 
the other New England States and was completed by the act of 
1798, which provided for a board of school overseers or visitors in 
each school society, who were given power to examine, approve, and 
dismiss school-teachers. From the same period also came another 
momentous change into the school system. Connecticut's charter 
placed her western boundary at the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean. 
The State had ceded all her vast western claims of land to the Federal 
Government in 1786, but had reserved a tract extending along the 
southern shore of Lake Erie for 120 miles from the western boundary 
of Pennsylvania. Tliis tract she now voted to divide and to give 
500,000 acres, the '' fire lands," to sufferers from the depredations of 



38 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

the British during the Rcvohition, while the proceeds of the sale of 
the remainder were " made into a perpetual fund, from which shall 
be * * * appropriatexi to the support of schools in the several 
societies constituted by law according to the lists of polls and ratable 
estates." lliis famous school fund, husbanded and invested by the 
able care of James Hillhouse, amounted to about $2,000,000 in 1838. 
The State constitution of 1818 decreed that it should " remain a per- 
petual fund," and its income was rapidly approaching $100,000 per 
annum. Mr. Hillhouse resigned the commissionership in 1825, and 
was succeeded by Mr. Scth P. Beers, who continued in the faithful 
discharge of the duties of his office until 1819. 

The evils of the excessive decentralization of the schools, with 
the consequent lack of supervision, and of the absolute dependence 
upon the income of the school fund, without sufficiently supplement- 
ing it from the proceeds of taxation, soon became apparent. Apathy 
and carelessness increased and the Connecticut school system was 
ceasing to be what a Kentucky document had called it in 1822, " an 
example for other States and the admiration of the Union." It had 
been claimed that in Connecticut " elementary education is more 
generally diffused than in any other State of the Union," but this 
preeminence was now endangered.^^^ Maj'o ^^ wrote that "the com- 
mon school of Comiecticut was left as a sort of educational house of 
refuge for the poorer class and, as a school for the poor in our country 
generally becomes a poor school, the educational decline went on 
apace." -° The answers which the board of commissioners of com- 
mon schools secured to their inquiries -^ in 1838, showed clearly the 
need of a reform. Of 211 school societies, 104 reported and, from 
other sources, information w^as obtained,-- that there were 1,700 
school districts, with an average number of 52 children in each. In 
32 districts, there were less than 10 children. In 1,218 districts, 
there w^ere 1,202 teachers, of whom 99G were men and only 296 Avere 
women. In many towns there was a winter school for a few Aveeks, 
taught b}^ a man, and a summer school also for a few months, taught 
by a woman. BetAveen these tAvo terms a long intermission occurred. 
Not only was there no professional class of teachers, but so great 
Avas their peripatetic character that, of the Avhole number, only 311 
had taught the same school before the current academic year, and 
only 100 had taught over 10 years, Avhile many of these only taught 
in the winter schools. The aA^erage monthly salary for a man was 
$15JL8 and for a woman $8.33j_which latter compensation the board 

"ITenry, C. H. Common Seliool System in Conn., 10 N. Y. Rov., 3.",1, April, 1842. 
" Rep. of IT. S. Commis. of Ed., 1890-07, vol. 1, p. 774. 

^ lie especially disliked the school society, hut I do not find that Barnard viewed it as 
a great evil. 

»i 1 Am. J. Ed., 680. 

*2 See 1st Report of the Board in Conn. School Joarnal. 



SECRETARY 01^ THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 39 

rightfully considered " inadequate and disproportionate.'" Teachers 
received their board, in addition to this; taking such acconnnodations 
as the parents of the pupils in turn could alford. This practice of 
" boarding around " — a sort of educational vagabondage — made the 
teacher's life much more uncomfortable and less attractive. There 
was no " seminary for teachers " and the best teachers soon obtained 
positions in private schools, where they would be better paid and 
more steadily employed.-^ Of 67,000 children of school age, 50,000 
were enrolled in the public schools and the daily attendance averaged 
42,000. In private schools, 12,000 children were enrolled and the 
remaining 5,000 were returned as not attending schools. 

Only one report from a school society, written before 1838,, could 
be found by Barnard. The length of the term varied with the com- 
pensation of the teacher, which was governed, not by his qualifica- 
tions, but by the amount of public money in hand. The teachers 
were not always examined as to their qualifications, nor were the 
schools often visited. If there was any examination at all it was 
conducted by the school district trustees, and there was no system of 
certifying teachers ; nor were there any provisions of law fixing the 
qualifications of teachers. Sometimes schools were forced to close 
in winter for lack of fuel. The schoolhouses were poor. There was 
little moral instruction, no fixed course of stud}^ nor uniformity of 
textbooks. In the various schools 60 kinds of readers and 34 differ- 
ent arithmetics — in all, 200 elementa-ry textbooks — were used. In 
122 school societies the New Testament or the Bible was the chief 
or only reader used. Through the diversity of studies there was a 
lack of attention to young children, and an almost complete lack of 
gradation was often found. Parents failed to cooperate with teach- 
ers, who looked on their employment merely as a temporary resource. 
Only six school libraries could be found in the State. The children 
muddled through their school life, but in spite of all drawbacks often 
obtained a good education. Yet the tendency was — 

to degrade the common school, as the hroad platform where the children of 
the rich and the poor could stand in the career of knowledge and usefulness 
together, into a sort of charity school for the poor, to make it common in its 
lowest sense, not in its original, noble, republican meaning. 

Conservatism also opposed improvement : -* 

Among a class of the community, an impression prevailed that schoolhouses, 
studies, books, mode of management, and supervision which were good enough 
for them 50 years ago were good enough for their children now, althoug'i 
their churches, houses, furniture, barns, and implements of every kind exhibited 
the process of improvement. 

The principle was avowed that the school fund was intended for 
the exclusive benefit of the poor, and that to support the common 

» 1 Am. J. Ed., 674. «* 1 Am. J. Ed., 709. 



40 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

school by a tax on the property of the whole community was " rank 
oppression on those who had no children " to educate or who chose 
to send them to private schools. By an increasing class of the com- 
munity, " who despaired of effecting anything important in the 
common schools, private schools of every name and grade were ex- 
clusively patronized." " Opinions and practices like these would 
destroy the original and beneficent character of the common school 
and strike from it the very principle of progression." 

The little intei'est taken in tlae common school was not only shown directly 
In the above ways, but was more exhibited, indii'ectly, in the subordinate 
places assigned it among other objects in the regards and efforts of the public 
generally, as well as of that large class of individuals who wei-e foi'emost in 
promoting the various benevolent, patriotic, and religious enterprises of the 
day. 

The discovery of this condition was no new thing. More impor- 
tant were the efforts of the commissioners to place the facts clearly 
before all the people and to enforce the lesson of these facts by the 
enthusiasm and energy of their secretary. In 1816, Denison 01m- 
sted,^^ who later became professor of natural philosophy at Yale, 
upon taking his master of arts degree, delivered an oration at the 
Yale commencement on the " State of Education " in Connecticut, 
in .which address he pointed out " the ignorance and incompetency 
of schoolmasters " as the primary cause of the low condition of the 
common schools, and appealed, both to public and private liberality, 
to establish institutions where a better class of teachers might be 
trained for the lower schools. He was then engaged in teaching in 
New London and had already projected an "Academy for School 
Masters." 

The Eev, Samuel J. May -'' accepted a call to the Unitarian Church 
in Brooklyn, Conn., in 1822, and went there " with highly raised ex- 
pectations of the character " of the State's schools. He found, how- 
ever, that the school fund had " depressed, rather than elevated, the 
public sentiment of education." The low wages of teachers, the ex- 
cessive multiplication of schools, the lack of adequate supervision 
impressed him unfavorablJ^ 

In May, 1823, James L. Kingsley, professor of ancient languages 
at Yale, writing in the North American Review upon the School 
Fund and the Common Schools of Connecticut ^^ proposed the estab- 
lishment of a superior school in each county, where teachers "may 
be themselves thoroughly instructed." In August of the same year, 
Mr. William Russell, principal of a school in New Haven, published 
a pamphlet entitled " Suggestions on Education," in which one of 
the suggestions was a seminary for the teachers of the district 
schools. 

» Am. Ed. Biog., p. 121. *o Am. Ed. Biog., 39. « 10 Am. J. Ed., 15. 



SECRETARY OF THE COlSriSrECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 41 

Rev. Dr. Gallaiidet, in the year 1825, over the signature " A 
Father," wrote a series of essays for the Connecticut Observer, at 
Hartford, on a " Phin of a Seminary for the Education of Instruc- 
tors of Youth." This advocacy of special institutions for the pro- 
fessional training of young men and women for the office of 
teaching ^^ was widely influential. The articles were collected and 
published in a pamphlet of 40 pages and were discussed in educa- 
tional conventions held in Hartford in 1828 and 1830.^° Of the author 
Rev. Mr. May^" wrote that he was especially important as an edu- 
cator, since he " not only gave every day, in his instruction of his 
pupils, remarkable illustrations of the true principles and some of 
the best methods of teaching, but he interested himself, directly and 
heartily, in the improvement of all schools." In May, 1826, the 
legislature had printed a report made by Hawdey Olmsted, prin- 
cipal of a private school in Wilton, conceding that the condition of 
the schools was low and that much ought to be clone to improve 
them. In 1828 Olmsted prepared a second and similar report. 

Rev. Mr. May was impelled, by his conviction of the " defects in 
our connnon schools," to issue a call for a convention in 1826 to 
consider these defects, their causes, and "the expedients by which 
the}^ may be corrected." Twenty tow^ns sent 100 delegates, and 
valuable letters were received. Among May's coadjutors were 
W. A. Alcott, of Wolcott, and Bronson Alcott. In the next year, at 
Hartford, the Connecticut Society for the Improvement of Com- 
mon Schools was formed. R. M. Sherman accepted its presidency 
and Rev. Horace Hooker, T. H. Gallaudet, and Thomas Robbins 
were "" real laborers " therein.^^ About 30 years afterwards May 
wrote : 

Since that day the interest of the people and their rulers has not been suf- 
fered to die ; until, at length, under the lead and by the unremitted exertions 
of Henry Barnard, LL. D., one of the wisest and ablest of master builders, 
the system of common schools in Connecticut has come to be so improved that 
it need not shrink from a comparison with any other in our couutry.^^ 

Without such a band of men interested in the cause of education 
as we have found in Connecticut, even Barnard's " unremitted ex- 
ertions " would have failed. He well appreciated the need of arousing 
the people and, in his second annual report,"-"* he called attention 
to the need of publicity. All agencies for influencing the public 

28 Am. Ed. Biog., 106. 

2» They were republished in the Annals of Education for 1831 and in the Connecticut 
Common School Journal for 1838. 10 Am. J. Ed., 15. 

30 Am. J. Ed. Biog., 39. 

31 Am. Ed. Biog., 39, 106. 

32 In 1830 a teachers' convention was held at Hartford under the presidency of Noah 
Webster. Gallaudet was one of the committee of arrangements and among the speakers 
were Dr. Humphry, William A. Alcott, and Rev. Gustavus Davis. Am. Ed. Biog., 106. 

23 Conn. Com. Sch. J., 199. 



42 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

mind must be called upon. The press had been almost silent, and 
the church had almost forgotten the school, its " earliest offspring." 
One of Barnard's earl}' acts Avas to secure the assistance of Dr. 
Gallaudet, by aiding in securing a fund to pay him a salary for five 
years of $750 per annum. The Connecticut Retreat for the Insane 
offered Dr. Gallaudet $500 for serving as its chaplain and Barnard 
raised the remaining amount, that he might be aided by Gallaudet, 
in the hitter's spare time. As a result, the two men visited every one 
of the eight counties in 1838^^ and addressed conventions of teachers, 
school officers, and parents. In 1839 and 184:0, Gallaudet took part 
in teaching the normal classes for teachers held in Hartford. ^" At 
the end of the first year of the board's existence, in May, 1839, 
Barnard made his report concerning 1,200 schools. He had ad- 
dressed over 60 public meetings, inspected over 200 schools wliile 
they were in session, and had spoken or written to officers or teachers 
in over two-thirds of the school societies. He had also edited the 
monthly Connecticut Common School Journal, of which an edition 
of G,000 copies had been circulated, for the most part gratuitously, 
throughout the State. For these services he had received ^^ a per 
diem of $3, and his expenses. Of this report, Chancellor Kent ^^ said 
that it was — ■ 

a laboi'ious and thorough examination of the condition of the common schools 
in every part of the State. It is a bold and startling document, founded on 
the most painstaking and critical inquiry, and contains a minute, accurate, 
compreliensive, and instructive exhibition of the practical condition and op- 
eration of the common school system of education.^' 

Gov. Ellsworth, in his message to the legislature, thus asked : 
Who that wishes the rising generation to be blessed with knowledge, and 
especially those indigent children who have no other advantages beside the com- 
mon school, will look on this generous and Christian effort with jealous feel- 
ings? 39 We have, in Connecticut, long enjoyed a system of general educa- 
tion, the work of experience and time, which should not 1)6 altered in a spirit 
of experiment or rashness. Nor do I apprehend anything of the kind from 
ihose who are most zealous in the cause of education. It is certain that our 
schools can be essentially improved and that something should be attempted 
worthy of the subject. 

What Barnard attempted at this session has been told in the pre- 
vious chapter. 

The first number of the Connecticut Common School Journal Avas 
published in August, 1838, at a subscription price of 50 cents a year. 

3* Am. Ed. Biog., 107. 

^ Uc later appeared before the connnittee on appropriations in behalf of a normal 
school, lectured at a teachers' convention in Hartford in 184G, etc. 

30 1 Am. .1. Ed., 673. 

^'' Comtuentaries, Vol. II, p. 196. 

^ Kent refers to Barnard's works in general " with the highest opinion of their merits 
and value." 

3" 1 Am. J. Ed., 67G. 



SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 43 

In the opening address the board solicited the cooperation of the 
public " to promote the elevated character, the increasing prosperity, 
and the extensive usefulness of the common schools of Connecticut." 
The magazine must have been most stimulating and informing to its 
readers. Its scope is fully as wide as the more famous American 
Journal of Education, which Barnard afterwards edited, and it is 
much more interesting and better journalism. In the early numbers 
we find articles upon Diversity of textbooks, female teachers, the 
Bible in schools, newspapers, schoolhouses, infant schools, Sabbath 
schools, school furniture, professional education, school conventions, 
school visitors, drawing, gravitation, reviews of educational litera- 
ture, music, Ij'ceums, schools in South America, in Holland, and in 
Prussia, in Michigan, in Cincinnati, and in New York, school libra- 
ries and town associations for the improvement of schools. Later 
follow articles on English school government, schools in Albany and 
London, the Waldenses, hj^giene, management of schools, local his- 
tory, the use of slates, school management. Gallaudet's articles, 
Bushnell's sermon on " Christianity and the Common School," Cal- 
vin E. Stowe upon normal schools, diversify the contents. " What 
can be done to improve common schools this winter ? " and " School 
books recommended in Windham County " are found by the side of 
articles on Pestalozzi, Chinese education, spelling, geography, and 
bookkeeping. Thus did the journal carry out its aim to "diffuse 
light." In his presidential address before the meeting of the Ameri- 
can Institute of Instruction, held at Portland, Me., in August, 1864, 
Mr. Charles Northend, of New Britain, spoke of this periodical and 
of its editor in these words : 

It hardly need be said that the journal was published by Mr. Barnard at a 
constant pecuniary sacrifice — a sacrifice no man would make whose soul was not 
wholly alive to the magnitude and importance of the work in which he was 
engaged. Teachers of New England can not too gratefully remember the name 
of Henry Barnard for his earnest efforts to arouse the public mind to the 
importance of public education and for his long-continued labors as a pioneer 
in the work to which he so assiduously devoted himself; often, too, under the 
most disheartening circumstances. Let his name and memory be cherished by 
teachers and handed down to posterity, as one whose best energies and talents 
were given to the cause of education with a zeal which no coldness, apathy, or 
even opposition could quench. Let us not, my friends, who are, in some measure, 
reaping the fruits of his labors, cease to be grateful to him for breaking up the 
fallow ground and casting in the seed, but may we strive so to till the soil pre- 
pared for us that year by year it may become more productive. 

At a State educational convention, held at Hartford on August 28 
and 29, 1839,*° Barnard was most active, speaking on the importance 
of gradation of schools, on school architecture, on vocal music and 
drawing in schools, and on institutions and agencies for the proper 

<«28 Am. J. Ed., 233. 



44 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

training of teachers. During the following autumn,*^ at his own 
expense, Barnard called together the first teachers' institiitue in 
America to — 

show the practicability of making some provision for llie belter qualifications 
of common-school teachers, by giving them an opportunity to revise and extend 
their knowledge of the studies usually pursued in district schools and of the 
best methods of school arrangements, instructions, and government, under the 
recitations and lectures of experienced and well-known teachers and educators. 

Thus what the legislature had refused to appropriate money for 
was carried out by the initiative of this enthusiastic young man of 28 
years. '*^ A group of about 25 teachers from Hartford County was 
gathered and- placed under the general charge of T. L. Wright, 
principal of the grammar school, who taught grammar and school 
keeping. Mr. John D. Post, a teacher in the grammar school, re- 
viewed arithmetic, and Mr. Charles Davies explained higher mathe- 
matics, as far as they were ever taught in the district schools, or 
would assist in the understanding of elementary arithmetic. Rev. 
Mr. Burton, formerly one of the faculty of the teachers' seminary in 
Andover, Mass., gave lessons in reading; Rev. Dr. Gallaudet ex- 
plained how composition could be taught even to young children, 
and gave lectures on school government and the instruction of very 
young children on the slate. Mr. John P. Brace, principal of the 
Hartford Female Seminary, explained the first principles of mathe- 
matics and astronomy, the use of the globes, etc. Mr. Snow, the 
principal of the Center District School, gave several practical lessons 
in methods of teaching with classes in his own school ; while Barnard 
himself delivered several lectures explanatory of the relations of 
the teacher to the school, to parents, and their pupils, on the law^s 
of health to be observed by pupils and teachers in the schoolroom, 
and on the best modes of conducting a teachers' association and of 
interesting parents. A portion of each day was devoted to oral 
discussions and written essays on subjects connected with teaching 
and to visiting the best schools of Hartford. Before separating, the 
teachers published a card of thanks. Barnard wrote, in the Com- 
mon School Journal for November, 1839, that $1,000 (one-fifth of 
the appropriation asked) would have accomplished more "for the 
usefulness of the coming winter schools and the ultimate prosperity 
of the school system, than the expenditure of half the avails of the 
school fund in the present w'ay," for it could have given 1,000 of the 
1.800 teachers in the State " an opportunity of critically reviewing 
the studies which they will be called upon to teach, with a full ex- 
planation of all the principles involved." In his fervent way, he 
added : " No one sends a shoe to be mended, or a horse to be shod, 

" 1 Am. J. Ed., 662 ; 15 Am. J. Ed., 387. *^ 15 Am. J. Ed., 388. 



SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 45 

or a plow to be repaired, except to an experienced workman, and 
yet parents will employ teachers who are to educate their children 
for two worlds," without caring for training- of such teachers. 

In the spring of 1840,*^ Barnard, at his own -expense, assembled a 
similar class of female teachers in Hartford under Mr. John P. 
Brace, with the same satisfactory result; but in vain did he renew 
his recommendation to the general assembly for an appropriation. 
He was not discouraged. During the next three years, in addresses 
before conventions and in interviews over 15 States, he presented this 
mode of dealing with the problem of young people who rush into 
this "sacred work without that special preparation which its deli- 
cacy, difficulties, and far-reaching issues demand." Without ceasing 
to urge the establishment of normal schools, he also pointed out the — 

immediate, inexpensive, and practical results of gathering tbe young and less 
experienced teachers of a county (as tlie most convenient territorial division of 
a State) for a brief, but systematic review of the whole subject and, especially, 
for the consideration of difficulties already met with in studies and school 
organization and management, under eminent instructors. 

In 1840 and 1841, obedient^* to the call of his fellow citizens, espe- 
cially of Dr. Horace Bushnell, Barnard served as a member of the 
Hartford school committee and prepared a plan for the union of 
three city school districts, which unfortunately failed of adoption at 
that time. In the latter year, however, he was more fortunate in 
that he secured the unanimous passage by the legislature of a revised 
school laAv, which he had drafted at the request of the board and 
which had been discussed for several weeks by the joint committee 
on education, without any material change from the original draft. 
By this law the powers of the school districts were enlarged so that 
they might elect their own school committees, establish schools, em- 
ploy teachers, and provide suitable rooms, furniture, apparatus, and 
library for the schools. To check too great a subdivision of districts, 
no new one could be established, except by the general assembly, so 
as to reduce below 40 the number of children between the ages of 4 
and 16 in any district. Barnard considered that two schools in one 
district were better than two districts and wished to prevent the 
quality and quantity of instruction given in the schools from being 
sacrificed to the eagerness to bring schools nearer to every family. 
A provision was included for the establishments of union districts^ 
containing joint schools for older children, leaving j^ounger children 
by themselves and thus improving the gradation and cutting down 
by one-half the variety of ages, classes, and studies in each school. 

•«15 Am. J. Ed., 390. *«28 Am. J. Ed.. 233. 



46 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

This law tended to give permanent enipWment in the primary 
schools to female teachers and to eliminate all but the best male 
teachers. 

The law also made possible the establishment of schools of a higher 
grade by school societies, returning to the idea of the law of 1650, 
which provided for county grammar schools. Barnard felt it was 
very important to have high schools as public schools for all and not 
as private schools for the rich. 

The employment of competent teachers for at least half the year 
was made more certain by providing for examinations for teachers 
and directing that no public money be given to any district in which 
a certified teacher had not taught for four months during the year. 
Each teacher was directed to keep a school register. 

The powers and duties of school visitors were modified and more? 
clearly defined : They might prescribe rules and regulations concern- 
ing the studies, textbooks, classification, and discipline of scholars, 
and withhold teachers' certificates from unqualified persons. They 
must visit each school at least twice during each term, for " no ade- 
quate substitute can be provided for frequent, faithful, and intelli- 
gent visitation of schools." They may appoint a committee to act 
for them, shall receive $1 per day for their services, as in New York 
and Massachusetts, and must prepare an annual written report. 

School societies were directed to distribute public money so as to 
give each small district at least $50 a year and to encourage attend- 
ance of pupils by making the amount given each district depend on 
the aggregate attendance for the year. 

A most important provision forbade the exclusion of any child 
from school through the inability of parents to pay the school tax, 
since the burden of the education of the indigent ought to be placed 
on the community. 

Through this law it was felt that the progress of the schools was 
assured by the labor of the school visitors by collecting their reports 
for the information of the general assembly and by " disseminating 
back the information thence obtained " through the reports of tho 
board of commissioners; so that a valuable suggestion from ono 
society should become the property of the State. 

Barnard was not alone in planning for improvements in tho 
schools. In 1840, Prof. Denison Olmsted, who had become a member 
of the board of commissioners, drafted its annual report, in which 
he advocated " the emplo.yment of female teachers to a much greater 
extent than has hitherto been done." He also *^ frequently addressed 
teachers' institutes and lectured in the house of representatives in 
behalf of pending legislation concerning schools. The famous 

"Am. Ed. Biog., 123. 



SECRETARY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 47 

teacher, Mrs. Emma Willarcl/'^ had returned to live in Connecticut, 
and, residing in Kensington, was elected superintendent of schools 
in that town in 1840, as she was anxious to check the decadence of 
common schools. ' When Barnard came thither to hold a public 
meeting t^ie schools marched with banners and crowded the meeting 
house with the largest congregation that had been seen there since the 
ordination of a minister 22 years before. An address written for the 
occasion by Mrs. Willard was read by Mr. Elihu Burritt, '^ the 
learned blacksmith," and refreshments were passed in the church. 
Many came from neighboring towns and a band from Worthington 
volunteered its services. Mrs. Willard projected a plan for a normal 
school in Berlin, which was rather intended to be a well-organized 
system of teachers' institutes than a permanent school. Meetings 
like that at Kensington were held all over the State, and in Bar- 
nard's report for 1841 he wrote that he had addressed 125 public 
meetings in his three years of office, in addition to visiting over 400 
schools in session, holding interviews with persons in every school 
society and receiving communications from all but 50 societies. He 
had paid back all his salary and had expended $3,049 more from his 
own means. Other gentlemen had contributed $785 and the sub- 
scriptions to the Common School Journal had amounted to $1,293.^^ 
In his fourth report, made a year later, he stated*^ that, during his 
term of office, he had addressed 142 public meetings and secured 
300 addresses on 58 different educational topics from other men. He 
had also spoken to children in the schools and to voluntary associa- 
tions of parents and others interested in the improvement of schools 
in their towns, societies, or districts, as well as to assemblies of 
teachers in various societies and towns. To arouse interest, he had 
also often held meetings of all the schools in a town or school society 
with the teachers and parents and had urged the establishment of 
lyceums and lectures and libraries,*^ which — - 

aim to supply tlie defects of early education and to carry forward that educa- 
tion far beyond the point where the common school, of necessity, leaves it. 
They have been found and can be made still more useful, in bringing the 
discoveries of science and all useful knowledge to the fireside and worlcshop 
of the laborer, in harmonizing the diiferences and equalizing the destructions 
of society, in strengthening the virtuous habits of the young and alluring 
them from vicious tastes and pursuits, in introducing new topics and improving 
the whole tone of conversation among all classes. In this way, they create a 
more intelligent public opinion which will inevitably, sooner or later, lead to 
great improvement in the common school, as well as in all other educational 
institutions and influences. 

Barnard early recognized the danger of child labor, and in 1842 
published a pamphlet of 84 pages upon the Education and Employ- 
es Am. Ed. Biog., 100. Sketch by Henry Fowler. ■« 1 Am. J. Ed., 707. 
« Vide N. Y. Rev., Vol. X, p. 331, April, 1842. «• 1 Am. J. Ed., 711. 



48 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

ment of Cliilclren in Factories, wliich piimplilet contained an ap- 
pendix dealino- with the " influence of education in the quality and 
pecuniary vahie of hibor and its connection with insanity and crime." 

Returning to these themes in his report for 1842, he advocated the 
passage of a law prohibiting the emplo^nnent of a child 'under 14 
years of age in a factor}' for more than eight hours during the day- 
time, or at all either in the night or without a certificate of attend- 
ance on a day school for 3 months of the 12. 

He again advocated lecture courses during the winter in connec- 
tion with the schools and the establishment of libraries everywhere, 
for which new books should be purchased, " especially of that class 
which relate to the history, biography, scientific principles, or im- 
provement of the prevalent occupation of the inhabitants." ^° This 
report, in which he placed the duty of educating and supporting chil- 
dren first on the parents, then on the neighboi'hood, and finally upon 
the State, was his last. It was made in the beginning of May; and 
in an Independence Day oration delivered in Boston, Horace Mann 
was obliged to say : 

Four years aso a new system was established in Connecticut wliicli was most 
efficiently and beneficently administered inider the aiispices of one of the ablest 
and liest of men ; but it is with unspeakable re^i'et that I am compelled to add 
that within tlie last month all his measures for improvement have been suffered 
to fall." 

Barnard's activity had been of great benefit to Massachusetts. 
Kot confining his efforts to Connecticut,''- he had made such a con- 
vincing speech of two hours upon graded schools at Barre, Mass., 
that Mann had said to him: " If you will deliver that in 10 places, 
I'll give you $1,000." Mann had consulted with Gallaudet and Bar- 
nard in Hartford with regard to the original plan of the Massachu- 
setts Normal School, which was opened at Lexington in 1839, and 
Barnard had delivered addresses in favor of it. "V^Hien Everett was 
governor he asked Mann to write Barnard requesting him to come to 
Boston and save the State from thd disgrace of closing the normal 
school and doing aAvay with the State board of education, as had been 
threatened. Barnard responded to the call of Mann, and their joint 
efforts secured a change in the votes of several members of the legis- 
lature and thus prevented the threatened blow at the educational 
system of Massachusetts. 

As the cause of Barnard's dismissal from office, I can not but think 
that his activity as a Whig, some 10 years previously, had done much 
to prejudice the Democrats against him. That party had secured tho 
governorship and a majority of the legislature in 1842, overthrowing 
the Whigs, who had previously been in power. In his message to 
the general assembly , ^ov. Chauncey F. Cleveland s aid that the board 

«• 1 Am. J. Ed., 703. » 1 Am. J. Ed., 719. " N. E. Mag., N. S.. Vol. XIV, 567. 



SECRETAKY OF THE CONNECTICUT SCHOOL BOAED. 49 

of commissioners of common schools had been established as an ex- 
periment, since the beneficial influence of the school fund had been 
questioned. Another experiment had been the paying $1 per day to 
school visitors. The governor recommended the abolition of the ex- 
periments, since free service is better, and continued : 

Without questioning the motives of those by whom these experiments were 
suggested and adopted." I think it obvious that public expectations in re- 
gard to the consequences have not been realized and that to continue them 
will be only to entail on the State a useless expense. 

In later years, Barnard charged that Cleveland's chief assistant ^* 
was the " same archdemagogue, John M. Niles, who objected in 1838 
to paying visitors and attacked every year any State supervision of 
schools, opposed the union to the city school districts in Hartford, 
and circulated a petition to the legislature for the repeal of all laws 
for teaching" any but elementary branches of knowledge. Fearing 
a successful attack on the Connecticut board, Horace Mann wrote 
Barnard, on April 25, 1842, that George S. Hillard had written an ar- 
ticle in the defense of it for the North American Review and that Mann 
himself had written to Democrats on the matter and had visited 
them in Massachusetts, Albany, etc. The governor is said,^^ person- 
ally, to have spoken to the members on the committee on education 
in behalf of the position taken in his message, and, finally, the legis- 
lature passed an act by which " all direct supervision of the school in- 
terest on the part of the State" was destro^'^ed, as well as '^ any agency to 
awaken, enlighten, and elevate public sentiment in relation to the whole 
subject of popular education." The provisions relating to union schools 
also were stricken from the statutes. The committee on education, 
in their report favoring these reactionary measures, acknowledged 
that Barnard had " prosecuted, with zeal and energy, the duties as- 
signed him * * * and collected and diffused a fund of informa- 
tion throughout the school societies and districts." The alleged "want 
of success " was not attributed to " want of faithfulness and attention 
on liis part," but the hopes entertained that more lively interest would 
be taken upon the subject of common school education had not been 
realized and the expense attending Barnard's duties was a " source of 
serious complaint." 

In reply to this, Barnard pointed out that his expenses, paid from 
the civil list fund and not from the school fund, had been $1,571 
for the first year and $1,589 on the average for each of the first 
tliree years. The members of the board paid their own expenses. 
Barnard had been allowed $1,000 a year as salary and gave his whole 
time to the work. He had paid $3,049 from his own resources dur- 

M 1 Am. J. Ed., C77. »* 22 Am. J. Ed., 386. « i Am. J, Ed„ 677. 

107018°— 19 4 



50 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

ing his t&rm of office. For example, in 1839, he employed four 
teiichers to visit as many counties and report upon tlie s(ihools there. 
He had paid for the drawings, etc., of 50 new schoolhouses con- 
structed since 1838. He had borne the expense of the teacliers insti- 
tutes in 1839-40 and had paid also for placing pedagogical books 
in the stores and for contributions to the Common School Journal. 
He had distributed the educational laws of Connecticut at his own 
expense, Wlien his accounts had been audited by the committee on 
education in 1841, the report had stated that " the action of the board 
of commissioners had been well advised and useful and the labors 
and sacrifices of the secretar}'^ deserving of general approbation." ^^ 

In relinquishing his office, Barnard wrote in the Journal : " ^^'o 
look for our reward in the contemplation of the ever-extending 
results of educational efforts and in the consciousness that we have 
labored with fidelity on our small allotment in this great field of 
usefulness." The board's testimony to his " indefatigable exer- 
tions " was that his — 

labors will long be felt in our schools and be Iiiylily appreciated by all who 
entertain just and liberal views on education and, whether appreciated or not, 
he will assuredly have the satisfaction of having generously, with little or no 
pecuniary compensation, contributed four of the prime years of his life tO' the 
advancement of a cause well worthy of the persevering efforts of the greatest 
and i^est of men. 

AVe have mentioned many of his attempts at improvement in 
schools, but a few more still claim our attention. Impressed with 
the need of better schoolhouses, he published the first edition of his 
important work on School Architecture in 1830. In the years 1840- 
1842, largely as a result of the stimulating advice he gave, S,000 vol- 
umes were added to school libraries, and 100 pieces of apparatus 
bought for schools. Treatises were also prepared on Slate and Black- 
board Exercises,^^ and on Systems of Public Schools for Cities and 
Populous Villages. James S. Wadsworth, of Genesee, N. Y., visited 
his brother, Daniel, in Hartford in June, 1842, and, finding that the 
legislature would not pay for printing this report, paid for an edi- 
tion of 30,000 copies, which were gratuitously distributed.'^ Among 
the reforms which Barnard advocated, but which had not been 
achieved, were the abandonment of the quarter bills and the taxation 
of property, whether or not its owner had children. He felt that, 
when school expenses were met by bills paid quarterly by parents,^^ 

=" Among minor activities (1 Am. J. Ed., 697, G99) Barnard had inquired into the early 
intellectual and moral education of criminals and paupers to " a.scertain the universality 
and practical nature of education given in the schools," and was negotiating with MrH. 
Wilhird In the hope to secure her services gratuitously as principal of a seminary for 
the training of female teachers in connection with the education and care of orphan 
children. 

^' 1 Am. .T. Ed., 700. 

=^28 Am. J. Ed., 231. 

"* 1 Am. J. Ed., 701. 



SECRETARY OF THE COSTNECTICUT SCHOOL BOARD. 51 

parents were tempted to keep children at home for " trifling occa- 
sions " and that those who patronized private schools should not be 
exempted from all expense on behalf of the education of the poor. 
Another reform which he desired was the union, or at least the con- 
cert of action of several districts of a cit}'^, so as to have one system of 
studies, books, and management, a graded system being established, 
composed of primar}- schools with female teachers, secondary schools 
with male teachers, and high schools with separate departments for 
boys and girls, which schools, should give courses of instruction pre- 
paratory to the pursuits of commerce, manufactures, and mechanic 
arts.«° 

In general, we may sum up the achievements of his four years as 
follows: (1) He had agitated throughout the State the importance 
of iuiprovement of schools; (2) had revised the school law; (3) had 
clone much to better the school architecture; (4) had emphasized the 
importance of having professional teachers; (5) had shown the value 
of school supervision; and (6) had almost created educational litera- 
ture in America. 

These are no small achievements, and there is no wonder that his 
friends proposed to form a private organization and keep Barnard in 
his work as its secretary. When John T. Norton proposed this to the 
wise R. M. Sherman, the latter successfully opposed it, saying that 
the supervision of the schools was a State affair and ought to be under 
the legislature. 

Four years later, when time had enabled men to view the destruc- 
tion of the board of commissioners of common schools with some per- 
spective, Horace Mann wrote of this blow to education thus, in the 
IMussachusetts Common School Journal,^^ " One only of the New 
England States proves recreant to duty in this glorious cause, the 
State of Conrtecticut." He proceeded to write, with high praise of 
Barnard, that " it is not extravagant to say that, if a better man be 
required, we must wait at least until the next generation, for a better 
one is not to be found in the present." 

In Hartford the powerful voice of Horace Bushnell was raised in 
words of deep regret on account of Barnard's dismissal, in a lecture 
before the Young Men's Institute upon the Education of the Work- 
ing Classes. One of the newspapers commented upon this speech and 
Bushnell replied, stating that, by Barnard's removal, a — 

great injustice was done to liim, and a greater injury to the State. Mr. 
Barnard, at my instance in part, had withheld himself from a lucrative profes- 

<^'> It is interesting to obsei-ye that, in 185G, Barnard had retroceded somewhat from his 
position and then held that a " small tuition, fixed and payable In advance, so low as to 
be within the reach of the poor, will serve to remind parents of their responsibility and, 
in the aggregate, will be a large addition to the pecuniary means of a district." 

61 1 Am. J. Ed., 719. 



52 LIFE OF HENRY BAEISTARD. 

8ion and renounced the hope of a politician. No public officer that I have ever 
known in the State has done so much of labor and drudgery to prepare his 
field, expending at the same time more than he received and seeking his reward 
in the beneficent results by which he was ever expecting to honor himself with 
the State. 

His opponents, in dismissing him, " certainly could not have given 
him credit for that beneficent, that enthusiastic devotion, I may say, 
to his great object, which it is the unfailing token of an ingenious 
spirit to conceive and by which I am sure he was actuated."®^ 

«! Am. J. Ed.. 720. 



Chapter V. 

STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAND 

(1843-1849). 



After Barnard's retirement from office, he remained at liomc for a 
few months, except for a summer tour to the fountain heads of the 
Connecticut River. In October, supplied with letters of introduction 
from such friends as Dr. E. Jarvis, he started on an extended tour of 
the Western and Soutliern States, expecting thus to collect material 
upon educational history. Mann had urged him to accept the princi- 
palship of the normal school at Lexington, and Dr. Gallaudet was 
urgent that Barnard allow his friends to take up a subscription foi* 
his salary, so that his work might be continued in Connecticut, but ho 
cared to accept neither proposal.^ Leaving Hartford about the 20th 
of October, on the 28th he was in Buffalo, on November 10 in Cleve- 
land, whence he traveled to Detroit. On December 14 he was in 
Columbus, Ohio, and journeyed thence to Cincinnati, Lexington, 
Frankfort, Louisville, Nashville, and Vicksburg, where he arrived 
February 23. From Hartford, on February 14, his friend, George 
Sumner, wrote him that a rumor had come that Barnard had become a 
Roman Catholic and urged him to hasten home, " for there is another 
civic battle to be fought and, for aught I know, a victory to be won, 
and you should be here to enjoy the spoils." On the next day he was 
in Jackson, and, on the 26th, in Natchez. New Orleans saw him on 
April 1, Athens, Ga., on the 22d; and, passing through Augusta, 
Columbia, and Charleston, Barnard arrived at Petersburg on May 6, 
at Richmond on the 9th, and at Baltimore on the 15th. Philadelphia 
and New York were visited and he was in Hartford about the first of 
June. 

Of this journey Mayo wrote : " He was everywhere found carefully 
observing and wisely suggesting, and everywhere welcomed by the 
influential friends of education." ^ The summer passed and, in Sep- 
tember, Hon. Wilkins Updike, of Kingston, R. I., invited Barnard to 
visit him ^ and assist in devising a plan for a more efficient organi- 



1 Hughes, N. E. Mag., p. 567. 

2 Rep. of Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, I, 786. 

3 For incidental notices of Barnard's Rliode Island career, in addition to those elsewhere 
cited, reference may be made to W. H. Tolman's History of Education in R. I., p. 30 ; 
U. S. Bu. of Ed., Circ. of Inf., 1894, No. 1 ; Thomas B. Stockwell's History of Public Edu- 
cation in Rhode Island, 1876, and the Documentary History of Public Schools in Provi- 
dence, p. 96. 

53 



64 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

zation of the public schools of Rhode Island.* Mr. Updike was a 
momber of an old Rhode Island family and knew the needs of his 
State. With Barnard he drew up a brief act providing for the ap- 
pointment of an agent, or commissioner, to — 

collect «nd dispense, as widely as possible, among the people, knowledge of the 
most successful methods of arranging the studies and conducting the education 
of the young, to the end that the children of tlie State, who sliould depend on 
common schools, may have the best education that these schools may be made 
to impart. 

Barnard was — 

averse to any law which could not be sustained by public opinion and all hi3 
plans of operation were based on the cardinal idea of quickening, enlightening, 
and directing aright the popular intelligence and feeling, by judicious legal 
enactments — as public sentiment and voluntary effort will not long remain 
in advance of the law.s 

Mr. Updike was a member of the State legislature and introduced 
this bill. He also Secured an evening session of the assembly to 
hear an address by Barnard on " The conditions of a successful sj^s- 
tem of public schools." The bill was unanimously passed by both 
houses and soon afterwards Barnard was invited to "test the prac- 
ticability of his own plans of educational reform." He declined, on 
the ground of his projected literary work, but Gov. James Fenner 
answered him " It is better to make history than to write it," where- 
upon Barnard accepted the position offered him. As a result, ho 
organized a system of agencies in the next four years which vvrought 
a " revolution in the public opinion and the educational system of 
the State; a revolution which is without a parallel, so far as vre 
knoAv, in the history of popular education for thoroughness, com- 
pleteness, and permanence." The plan was in general that Avhich 
had been employed in Connecticut, but scarcely any opposition was 
aroused in Rhode Island, and, during the whole time of his holding 
the position, Barnard could not remember a single article in any 
newspaper "calculated to impede the progress of school improve- 
ment." Barnard's plan was first to ascertain the local conditions 
and then to arouse the people to reform them. He endeavored to 
shoAV men that they had been ignorant, to convince them of the ad- 
vantages of education, and to induce them to " contribute money for 
an object of which they do not confess the value."® His personal 
popularity helped his cause. President Kingsbury, of the Rhode Island 
Institute of Instruction, said that Barnard was " peculiarly happy in 
securing the cordial cooperation of persons of every class who take 
an interest in education,"^ and that he was "gentlemanly in his ad- 
dress, conciliatory in his measures, remarkably active and earnest," 
one who " combines more essential elements of character for a super- 

* 1 Am. J. E., 723. » 1 Am. J. Ed., 7liG. » 1 Am. J, Ed., 727. ' Am. J. Ed., 725. 



SUPEKINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAInTD. 55 

intendent of education than any other individual with whom it has 
been my fortune to be acquainted."* 

The problem was historically very different from that encountered 
in Connecticut. Ehode Island had been settled by people who denied 
that religion was a concern of the State, and in those days education 
was so closely connected with religion that they interpreted the 
plirase " only in civil things" to exclude the support of schools from 
the field of governmental activity. To compel a citizen to support 
scliools, or to educate his children, was regarded as akin to a violation 
of the right of freedom of conscience. Again, the leading denomina- 
tion in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Congregational, believed 
in a learned ministry'', while in Rhode Island the Quakers and Bap- 
tists, which were prominent denominations, did not emphasize this 
idea. Hostility to other States also hindered the establishment of 
schools in Rhode Island. Until 1828, while there Avere private 
schools in many places, there were no public schools outside of Provi- 
dence, and, about 1835, a thrifty old farmer is reported to have said 
that he would not contribute to a district school, for " it is a Con- 
nect icutcustomjmd^^ ^ So strong Avas this hostility that 
m it)4t), alter Barnard had explained the proposed new school law 

to the legislature, the member from C is said to have referred 

to the provision that the towns must raise a sum by taxatfon to sup- 
poit schools and to have said that " this could not be enforced in 
C at the point of the bayonet." Some one even said to Bar- 
nard : " Why waste A'our talents ; you might as well beat a bag of avooI. a 
Our habits are fixed. Yoii canjiot^chan^e theni. One might as Avell ^"^ 
tal^e aTman's ox to plow his neighbor's field as take his money to edu- np^ 
cate his neighbor's son."^° TITere was tlie same evil of excessive sub- » 
division of toAvns into small school districts as in Connecticut," ^ 
the same A'arietj^ of textbooks. Schools outside of Providence Avere 
open for barely three months in each year. Of the 21,000 children 
enrolled in the public schools,^^ the regular attendance amounted 
to only 13,500. The idea that the State was responsible for the 
education of children was foreign to Rhode Island soil.^'^ The task, 
therefore, which lay before the ncAV agent was no mean one, for he 
had to " revolutionize the public sentiment of the State." 

Barnard was then 32 years old and was exceptionally well fitted 
fpr the enterprise. He was in — 

tl)e full Angor of an aggressive manlioocl, possessed of a thorough collegiate 
etlueation, good natiA'e powers as a speaker, a thorough training in the law, 

* BariiAi-d had been elected a corresponding member of the Rhode Island Historical 
Society in 1838, which seems to have been his flrst connection with the State. 
» 1 Am, J. Ed., 723. 
i" Hughes, 13. 569. 

^ Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1890-97, I, 786. 
^ 3,000 were in private schools. 
» Hughes, p. 568 ; Stockwell, T. B., Commis. of Ed. R. I,, report for 1894. 



56 LIFE OF HENEY BARNARD. 

and the knowledge and experience gained from the discharge of somewhat 
similar duties in lus native State, as well as from travel and study abroad. 

First "he worked to learn the actual condition of educational affairs 
in his own characteristic, persistent, and minute style," to quote 
Mayo. During a j^ear and a half this apostle of the new educational 
gospel went up and down this State into every remote corner, over 
eveiy liill, through every vallej', until it is not too much to say that 
no man could have been ignorant of wdiat was going on, and teachers 
and scholars were inspired to a more earnest effort. School officers 
were roused to greater activity; the people in public assemblies and 
at their own firesides were taught the new and better way. The 
concrete result of the labors of these 18 months was the act passed 
finally June 27, 1845, and which has " continued in substance to the 
present." Barnard's appointment was announced by Gov. Fenner ^* 
on Dec. 6, 1843. The State was so small that if it moved at all it 
^^as bound to move all together, but the time was a difficult one, for 
the aftermath of tlie Dorr Rebellion of the previous year was still 
evident. Elisha E. Potter" wrote, over 20 years later, that though 
Barnard was in the State during " a time of intense political excite- 
ment, all harmonized when working under his enthusiastic and 
unselfish leadership." Six months after he took office, on June 23, 
3 844, Horace Mann wrote Barnard from Wrenthem, Mass., concern- 
ing the Rhode Island school law, which Barnard was already 
framing : 

I thinlv the plan an admirable one. Its principal features are also excellent. 
Its minor details must, of course, be so framed as to correspond with the habits 
of the people and the requirements of the laws on kindred subjects. Of these, 
a stranger can not judge. I see nothing exceptionable in them. 

Mann felt that care must be taken that no religious narrowness en- 
ter in, and in conclusion, he wrote: " If Rhode Island passes that bill, 
she will have one of the best systems of public instruction in the 
W' orld, and in one generation it will regenerate the mass of her 
people." The bill, retaining the useful features of the old law, was 
introduced into the general assembly in session May, 1844, and, when 
reported to the house ^® from the committee in June, was printed 
and discussed. The provisions Avere explained by Barnard before a 
convention of the two houses, questions were answered, and after 
debate the bill received the almost unanimous vote of the house. 
The senate deferred action, but the bill, together with Barnard's 
remarks, was printed and circulated among the school officers in the 
towns. In June, 1845, a new legislature took up the bill, which w^s 
then introduced in the senate. Barnard made " a familiar exposi- 
tion of its provisions, explaining the difficulties of the school 

"Monroe, p. 16. « Letter dated Washington, Jan. 10, 18G7. i" 1 Am. J. Ed., 728, 



SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAND. 57 

committees," and the bill passed by a large majority and with few 
modifications. The law went into force on November 1, and through 
circulars, addresses, etc., Barnard tried to make the transition easy. 
After nine months' experience of the system, in 1846, Barnard called 
.a convention of county inspectors, town commissioners, and school 
district trustees to meet in Providence. There all difficulties were 
discussed, with the proper forms of proceeding from the first or- 
ganization of a district, and the results were printed in a pamphlet, 
together with further reflections upon the subject. 

After a year's work in the State, at Barnard's suggestion the 
Rhode Island Institute of Instruction was organized. A prelim- 
inary meeting ^'^ was held in the city council chambers at Providence 
on December 23, 1844, and a committee, then appointed, reported to 
a second meeting on January 21, 1845, recommending the establish- 
ment of the institute. Barnard then spoke on the necessity of asso- 
ciated and cooperative methods. Frequent meetings must be held 
and jiublic opinion enlightened if Avise and liberal measures are to 
be adojDted. The public press must advocate the desired reforms. 
Tracts must be printed and circulated. Arrangements had been made 
to acid an educational supplement to the almanacs sold in Rhode 
Island. County teachers' institutes had been planned, as had been 
a State normal school. Public libraries and lecture courses were also 
included in the scheme. Meetings were held very frequentlj^ during 
the succeeding months, with papers and discussions upon such sub- 
jects as female teachers, gradation of schools, town libraries, punc- 
tuality, the educational needs of Rhode Island, evils of a misdirected 
education. After the first few months fewer meetings were held, 
but throughout Barnard's administration the institute met every 
January to discuss the progress and condition of education in the 
State. When Mr. Updike heard that Barnard thought of leaving 
the State, after the passage of the act of 1845, he protested, saying: 
" You must keep at our head, direct our movements ; on your accept- 
ance depends the destiny of the school progress of Rhode Island." 
Barnard stayed and spent four more years in the State. They were 
busy years. He was editing the Journal of the Rhode Island In- 
stitute of Instruction (Vol. Ill consists of his report for 1848) and 
preparing a series of Educational Tracts,^® as well as a volume on 
Normal Schools in the United States and Europe,^^ and a more im- 
portant one on School Architecture.^*^ This was an elaborate M'ork, 
exhibiting model plans for schools varying in size from one room 

"14 Am. J. Ed., 561.' 

1* The subjects were : Education in the United States ; Education in its relation to 
health, insanity, pauperism, and crime ; The school system of Massachusetts ; School- 
houses ; Reading, grammar, composition ; and the Cooperation of parents. 

is.Published in 1847 and enlarged in 18.50, pp. 670. 

*" The fifth edition, with 464 pages, appeared in 1856. 



58 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

to eight, accommodating 240 children, discussing errors in phmning 
schools, and the true principles of constructing them, the best meth- 
ods of seating, ventilating, and heating schools, the best scho<d 
and gymnastic apparatus, suitable titles of books for school, refer- 
ence, and educational libraries. Hints as to classification of schools, 
examples of dedicatory exercises, and rules for the care and preserva- 
tion of schoolhouses are all given.^^ 

During Barnard's term of office much was done toward providing 
new and attractive schoolhouses for Ehode Island.^^ The attention 
of parents and school officers was called to the connection betvveeu 
good schoolhouses and good schools and to the " immense injury done 
to the comfort and health of children by the connnon neglect of the 
ventilation, temperature, and furniture of schoolrooms." Six thousand 
pamphlets containing plans of schoolhouses were distributed. De- 
tailed plans were gratuitously furnished builders of schoolhouses. 
Barnard endeavored to secure the erection of at least one model 
schoolhouse in each county and to interest men of wealth and intelli- 
gence in the building of schoolhouses. The school commissioners 
were instructed not to give public money to districts whose housea 
were not suitable. As a result Rhode Island was said to have more 
good and fewer poor schoolhouses in proportion to the wdiole number 
than any other State. The school term w^as lengthened, and some- 
thing was done tow^ard augmenting school attendance, especially 
among young children and girls over 12. Schools were better graded 
and 100 primary schools w-ere placed under women teachers. A few 
high schools were organized. The course of instruction was mado 
more thorough, practical, and complete. Music, linear drawing, 
composition, and mathematics as applied to i^ractical life were intro- 
duced into many schools, and all studies were taught after better 
methods from better books. In many schools blackboards had been 
introduced. Outline maps and globes were also frequently to be 
found. Uniform textbooks had been introduced into 22 towns, and 
in 18 of these, through cooperation with the department, at reduced 
prices. There had come to be a more extensive and permanent em- 
ployment of w'ell-qualified teachers. Examinations were required to 
be passed before entering on teaching, and in one year 125 persons 
Avere rejected wdio would have been employed in former daj's. 

The journe.ys of the agent and the teachers' institutes in the 
autumns had "helped to train the public in the appreciation of good 
teachers, and at the same time to elevate the standards and quicken 
the spirit of improvement among the teachers themselves." Meetings 
of teachers in adjacent towns had been found useful for the con- 

21 An abridgment, made for a committee of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Education, was called Practical Illustrations of School Architecture, pp. 175. 
2« 1 Am. J. Ed., 728. 



SUPERINTENDEInT of schools IK RHODE ISLAND. 59 

sideration of educational topics. Over 30 good volumes on the 
theory and practice of teaching had been brought within reach of 
every teacher. The introduction of female teachers had improved 
discipline, moral influences, and manners. Better men had been se- 
cured as school commissioners, and they supervised the schools more 
efHciently. Before Barnard came not a town or a school society in 
the State raised a tax for scliools, and the city tax amounted 
to $9,000 only. In 184G, for the first time in the history of the State, 
every town voted and collected a school tax, and in 1847 the aggre- 
gate amount raised by the town tax to pay teachers was nearly twice 
that paid from the general treasury. On December 12, 1845, W. H. 
Welles, a prominent New England teacher,-^ wrote from Andover to 
the Boston Traveller that Rhode Island had " completely reorganized 
its system of public schools and incorporated with it the best features 
of other States." At the same time he wrote Barnard that : 

Teachers' institutes, as organized and conducted by you in Rhode Ishmd, act- 
in;? at once upon teachers, school officers, and parents, on tlie liome, and the 
school, is (sic) a new agency in local school work and professional improvement. 
Your institutes left the places where held in a red-hot glow. Your separation of 
pi-actical professional work with teachers, in your day sessions, from popular 
addresses to parents and the public generally in the evening is most judicious. 

A beginning had been made in the establishment of libraries and 
popular lectures. In 29 of the 32 towns of the State a library of at 
least 500 volumes had been established, and 17 courses of lectures had 
"already awakened a spirit of reading, disseminating much useful 
information on subjects of practical importance, suggested topics, 
aud improved the whole tone of conversation, and brought people of 
widely differing sentiments and habits to a common source of enjoy- 
ment." -■* Though apathy had been dispelled, Barnard never felt 
satisfied, but considered that many things yet needed to be done. All 
children must be brought into the schools. "Institutions of industry 
and reform for vagrant children and juvenile criminals must be 
established." The education of girls had been neglected. Barnard 
nrged that, "if you can educate only one sex, the female children 
should have the preference, that every home shall have an educated 
mother." Public libraries must be encouraged.-' "Introduce into 
every town and every family the great and the good of all past time 
of this and other countries by means of public libraries of well 
selected books." He wished Rhode Island to "provide for the profes- 
sional training, the permanent employment, and reasonable compen- 
sation of teachers, and especially of female teachers, for upon their 
agency must we rel}^ for a higher style of manners, morals, and lutei- 
ns n. E. A. Proc, 1901, p. 402. 

2* Rev. Noah Porter, in 67 North Am. Rov., 240-240, Jul.v, 1S48, wrote, in his article 
on the " Common School in Rhode Island," that this State stirs Connecticut to emulation. 
25 1 Am. J. Ed., 730. 



60 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

lectiial culture." He wished to see a high school established in every 
town, and scholarships for young- men to he established in the county 
seminaries, or in Brown University. While thus in the middle of his 
useful career his health failed him, and he resigned on January 25, 
181!).-*' The legislature asked him to make an oral communication to 
them in joint convention on the condition and improvement of the 
public schools,-^ He did so, and the Providence Journal wrote that 
his address was "most eloquent and impressive, and was listened to 
for nearly two hours Avitli almost breathless attention." The legisla- 
ture resolved unanimously tliat Barnard be thanked for the "able, 
faithful, and judicious manner in which he fulfilled his office." ^^ 
On January 30 a sih^er pitcher was presented him by the teachers of 
the State.^^ In Barnard's reply he stated that — 

The cause of true education, of the complete education of every human 
being, without regard to the accidents of birtli or fortune, is worthy of the 
concentration of all our powers and, if need be, of any sacrifice of time, money, 
and labor we may be called upon to make in its behalf. Ever since the Great 
Teacher condescended to dwell among men, the progress of this cause has been 
upward and onward, and its final triumph has been longed for and prayed for 
and believed in by every lover of his race. The cause of education shall not 
fail, unless all the laws which have heretofore governed the progress of society 
shall cease to operate and Christianity shall prove to be a fable and liberty a 
dream. 

The Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, on February 5, unani- 
mously voted to express to Barnard their high sense of appreciation 
of his labors.^° Testimonials abound as to the value of Barnard's 
service to Rhode Island. Horace Mann, in 1856, said that his work 
there was "the greatest legacy he had left to American educators, 
the best working model of school agitation and legal organization 
for the schools of the whole country." ^^ 

A year earlier, Wayland, in August, 1855, had told the American 
Institute of Instruction that the establishment of gradation in 
schools and the improvement in schoolhouses, in the last quarter 
century, were to be " ascribed more to the labors of Barnard than to 
any other cause." The results of his work might be discovered in 
almost cyery town in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Rev. M. Stone 
wrote of the work in this fashion : 

During the five years previous to Barnard's resignation more than 1,100 
meetings were held expressly to discuss topics connected with the public 
schools, at which upward of 1,500 addresses were d-elivered. One hundred 
and fifty of these meetings continued through the day an devening, upward 

2« 14 Am. J. Ed., 5G1 ; 1 Am. .T. Ed., 732. 

^ Is this the address referred to as having been given on Jan. 29, 1S49, before the 
Rhode Island Institute of Instruction V 14 Am. J. Ed., 5G1. 
" Norton, p. 17 ; Conn. Quar., 125. 
2»1 Am. J. Ed., 7.34, 735. 
=» 14 Am. J. Ed., 561. 
» rhilbrick, p. 450. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAND. 61 

of ICO through two evenings and a clay, 50 through two days and three 
evenings, and 12, Including teachers' institutes, through the entire week. In 
addition to this class of meetings and addresses, upward of 200 meetings of 
teacliers and parents were held for lectures and discussions on improved 
metliods of teaching and for public exhibitions or examinations of schools. In 
addition to all this, more than 16,000 educational pamphlets and tracts were 
distributed gratuitously through the State and upward of 1,200 bound volumes 
on teaching were purchased by the teachers, or added to public or private 
libraries. 

Rev, S. J. May, writing a sketch of Cyrus Pierce, a mutual friend, 
in Barnard's American Educational Biography (p. 421), said that 
Barnard " framed and set in operation the excellent school system of 
Rhode Island and has done more than anybody else to regenerate the 
school system of Connecticut." His " knowledge of the history of 
this revival of education " was, therefore, " more extensive and 
thorough " and his " judgment of its causes and effects is more to be 
relied on than that of any other man." 

Similar testimony has come from later writers. Boone ^^ stated 
that " in magnitude and detail, in permanency of result and general 
cooperation, Barnard's work in Rhode Island was — 

scarcely second to that of Horace Mann in Massachusetts. It is not extrava- 
gant~fo~say that the services of ]\Ir. Mann in Massachusetts and Mr. Barnard 
in Rhode Island and Connecticut have been the models, in comprehensiveness, 
system, and general spirit, of most of the inspections and oversight of State 
schools of the United States for nearly 50 years. 

The State Avhich he had benefited remembered him. In 1888 Gov. 
Taft recommended in a message to the general assembly that a set of 
the American Journal of Education be placed in each public library 
within the State, and continued that : 

In reviewing the history of education in Rhode Island I have been im- 
pressed anew with the sense of the great indebtedness of the State to the 
Hon. Henry Barnard, LL. D. It is not too much to say that no one ever 
did so much for the cause of popular education in this State as he. He 
gave to it time, enthusiasm, and intelligence, and also largely of his means. 

Mr. John H. Stiness, in an address at the celebration of the 
seventy-fifth anniversary of the Rhode Island Historical Society in 
1897, said of Barnard that "to him more than to any [other] one 
person do we owe the excellence and efficiency of our present system 
of public schools." 

In the same year the Right Rev. Thomas Clarke, bishop of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Rhode Island, bore testimony that: 

The State of Rhode Island has especial cause to remember him with grati- 
tude, as he gave our public-school system a stimulus which it has never lost, 
and by means of his multitudinous meetings and addresses he inspired tlie 
counnunity with an interest in education that never existed before. He was 

32 Education in U. S., 1890, 106. 



62 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAItD. 

not a man who sought his own, either in the way of fame or cmolnment ; the 
treasure lie laid up for his latter dajs was not in the lorni of gold and silver, 
and he was always as modest and oblivious of self as he was untiring in his 
labors and indefatigable in his efforts for the good of others. His consistent 
anil spotless life and his patient endeavor to enlighten and arouse the country 
to the importance of a higher tone of education commend him to our respect 
and veneration. 

Lastly, Ave may well quote from the address delivered by Thomas 
B. Stockwell in October. 1898, at the time of opening the new lihodo 
Island Normal School buildings. Mr. iStockwell was secretary of 
the trustees, and while expressing his regret that Barnard could iK)t 
be present for the occasion, he paid him this tribute. He " revolu- 
tionized the sentiment of the State. It seldom comes to a common- 
wealth to be so laid under tribute to a person as our State of Rhode 
Island is to Henry Barnard, and I am doing him tardy justice in 
emphasizing the debt that Rhode Island owes him — a debt which 
she can never repay." Reference was then made to Barnard's plans 
for two normal schools in the State, one in Providence, affiliated 
with the city schools and with Brown University, and the other in 
some rural part of the State, having some features of manual labor 
connected with it for the benefit of rural schools. 

While in Rhode Island, Barnard was never forgetful of Hartford 
or of Connecticut. He learned of an effort to remove Rev. Thomas 
Robbins, D. D., to Rhode Island or to Harvard and to have his 
valuable library remain in one of these places. Barnard at once took 
up the matter and raised by subscription a fund sufficient to p:iy 
Dr. Robbins an annuity for the remainder of his life, provided ho 
would remove to Hartford, become curator of the collections of tlio 
Connecticut Historical Society there, and leave his library to that 
society. Robbins accepted this proposition, and it was Barnard's 
privilege in 1856, as president of the Historical Society, to pronounce 
a discourse upon the death of Dr. Robbins. 

After the Whigs came into power again in Comiecticut in 1844, 
Gov. Roger S. Baldwin ^^ spoke in his message to the legislature of tlie 
unsatisfactory conditions of the schools and referred to Barnard's 
work, whereby " a new impulse had been given to the cause of educa- 
tion." Nothing loath to show forth the errors of the Democrats, 
the legislature empowered the governor to appoint an investigating 
committee of 9, which reported in 1845, blaming the school socie- 
ties, and referring to Barnard's work with favor. In the conclusion 
of their report, for which they had been able to obtain statistics from 
only 59 of the 214 school societies, they stated : " One fatal deficiency 
seems to be that the schools are in politics, and the machiner}^ of one 
party seems to have been captured by the reactionists, or it may have 

« Kep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1S9G-97, Pt. I, p. 782. 



SUPERINTE:N'DE]SrT OF SCHOOLS IIT rvHODE ISLAI^D. 63 

fairly represented the numerical majority of the people." As a 
result of this report the office of State superintendent of education 
V. ;is created, and its duties were given to the commissioner of the 
scliool fund. 

In 1839 agitation began in Hartford with reference to the trans- 
formation of the old Hopkins Grammar School into a town high 
school.^* Barnard came to Hartford in August, 1845, to attend a 
meeting of the American Institute of Instruction, of which he was 
a director, and delivered a lecture before that body. At that time, 
he interested in the high-school project Mr, James M. Bunce, a pros- 
perous and public-spirited merchant. Barnard made five visits to 
Hartford in the next year and a half, during which visits he con- 
ferred with Mr. Bunce and other persons interested in this matter. 
In the autumn of 181:5,"® Mr. Bunce wrote Barnard, asking him to 
return to Connecticut, under a pledge of pecuniary and personal 
cooperation from himself and others," or tell us, at least, how to 
revive educational interest," which the "disastrous legislation" of 
184:2 had " almost extinguished." 

Barnard replied that he could not leave Rhode Island, but advised 
the establishment of a high school in Hartford and the placing of all 
t]ic schools in the city under a board of education, acting through 
a superintendent. To prepare for the revival of interest, he sug- 
gested a teachers' institute. The people of Connecticut must be 
aroused to the consciousness tliat their schools needed improvement. 
He continued: 

I sliall here work out my plan of scliool improvement, by educating the public 
mind up to the appreciation of the necessary conditions of a successful system of 
public schools, cheap enough for tlie poorest and good enough for the best 
citizens, and, at the same time train the agents in the administration of such 
a system — teachers, officers, and parents. It will take time and work, but I 
have schooled myself to labor and to wait. The work to be done hei-e is 
substantially the work which has to be done in Connecticut and every other 
State — tkc public must he enlightened as to all the details of the system — ■ 
t!ie indispensable features of a school law, the requisites of a good schoolhouse, 
the necessity of regular and punctual attendance, the proper distribution of 
studies and childi'en into the schools of different grades, and the classification 
of every school of any grade, and above all as to the qualities and qualification 
of good teacliers and how to select, train, and improve them, and especially to 
unike the most out of such young men and young women as will, until public 
opinion is made as to the requirements, rush into the business without the 
requisite knowledge and, especially, without any training or apprenticeship 
in organizing a school and communicating instruction, and governing and 
stimulating children by the highest motives. 

This letter and the interviews with Mr. Btmce led him to offer a 
prize for an essay on the " Necessity and means of improving the 

•» 28 Am. J. Eel., 233. 

s'' 15 Am. J. Ed., 390 ; 14 Am. J. Ed., 263 ; Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, p. 788. 



04 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

common scliools of Connecticut, with measures -which can be adopted 
by a vohuitary association to improve the common schools." The 
prize was won by the essay written by Rev. Noah Porter, jr., then a 
young clergyman settled over the Congregational Church in Farm- 
ington, later to be knoAvn as the distinguished philosopher and tho 
Avell-beloved president of Yale College.^^ Porter urged the establish- 
ment of teachers' institutes, thorough supervision of schools, opening 
of a normal school, better salaries for teachers, consolidation of 
schools, institution of high schools, the taxation of the property of 
the whole community for the support of public education, and the 
withholding of aid from the State school fund from every school 
society which did not raise a tax. All these measures had been 
advocated by Barnard, and he rejoiced to reecho Porter's appe^al 
thAt an effort be put forth to do away Avith the present educational 
depression, induce Connecticut to be true to herself, and revive her 
ancient glory.^^ 

Bunce printed and circulated this essay and also 5,000 copies of 
one by Barnard entitled : " Considerations on a Public High School 
in Hartford." ^^ The educational interests of the State were center- 
ing in Hartford.^'' In 1846 a convention of 250 teachers met there, 
having been organized by Rev. Merritt Richardson, of Plymouth, 
Conn. In February and March, 1847, Barnard spent four weeks in 
Hartford during the campaign, ended on March 8, in the election, 
at which it was decided to establish the high school.*" In order to 
influence the vote, he lectured on "Our city and our duties to its 
past, preeent, and future" before the Young Men's Institute; pre- 
senting the claims of the Connecticut Historical Society, which had 
recently gained possession of Dr. Robbins's library, andvof a rural 
cemetery, as duties to the past; a liberal and comprehensive system 
of education as the chief duty toward the present; and precaution 
against limitations in endowments and institutions, to prevent them 
from adapting themselves to altered and changing circumstances of 
a progressive age and country, as the chief duty toward the future. 

When the new high school was opened, it was very fitting to invite 
Barnard to deliver an address. He accepted and what he said there, 
on December 1, 1847, he repeated nine years afterwards at the open- 
ing of the Norwich Free Academy.*^ This new school might solve 
for the whole country the problem of higher education. Education 
must be either under the state or the church. " There can not be, 
there never has been, an efficient system of primary instruction whose 
officers and teachers were not supplied from public institutions of a 
higher grade." The curriculum must meet the demands of the age 

3« 1 Am. J. Ed., 721. ^ Hep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, p. 782. 

"14 Am. J. Ed., 244. <» 28 Am. J. Ed., 233. 

»»15 Am. J. Ed., 392. « 28 Am. J. Ed., 251. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAND. 65 

in science, but must not ignore the studies apparently less practical, 
such as mathematics and the classics — 

which, the gathered experience of successive generations of teacliers, and the 
profoundest study of the requirements of the mind of youth, and the disci- 
plinary and informing capabilities of the different kinds of knowledge, have 
settled to be the best, although not, as I hold, the only basis of a truly liberal 
scheme of general or professional education. I do not believe that any 
amount of applied science, and the largest amount practicable should be taught 
in this and the other institutions of higher learning; or that any attention 
which may be bestowed on the English language only, and whatever else is 
taught or omitted, the English language and literature should ever hold a 
prominent, the prominent, place in the actual aims and results of your scheme 
of study, can ever train the three great faculties of reason, memory, and 
imagination to their full, natural, and harmonious development. 

He also urged that the course of study should deal with the phe- 
nomena and duties of everyday life, that women be used as teachers, 
and that the cooperation of all the community be sought, to the end 
that there might be secured the " free struggle of children and youth, 
of the same age, of both sexes, and of every condition, for tlie masters 
of the same knowledge, and the acquisition of the same mental habits 
in their classrooms under accomplished teachers." 

While in Rhode Island,^- Barnard also aided greatly Mr. Seth P. 
Beers in the preparation of his four annual reports as superintendent 
of the common schools of Connecticut under the act of 1845, as well 
as in the preparation of circidars relating to returns from schools. 
In the second report, that for 1846, was contained a recommenda- 
tion that teachers' institutes be held. In October, such an institute 
was held in Hartford and was addressed by Eev. Drs. Gallaudet, 
Hawes, and Bushnell, and Messrs. W. A. Alcott, J. Olney, D. N. 
Camp, Rev. M. Richardson, N. L. Gallup, and J. E. Lovell. Other 
institutes were held in the spring of 1847, and, in May of that year, 
the legislature authorized the holding of at least two schools for 
teachers in each county, between September 15 and October 31, for 
" the purpose of instruction in the best modes of governing and teach- 
ing our common schools." Sixteen county institutes were then held, 
and in 1848, after a renewed recommendation, a permanent pro- 
vision for them was made by the legislature. Their success secured 
the founding of the normal school in 1849, but that is " another 
story," to be treated in the next chapter. We catch fleeting glimpses 
of Barnard's private life *^ throughout the years of his Rhode Island 
sojourn. In August, 1844, he went on a trip to Maine, to attend 
the meeting of the American Institute of Instruction and lecture 



" 15 Am. J. Ed., 390. 

*= On Apr. 7, 1847, he became a member of the New England Historical Genealogical 
Society, 56 N. E. H. G. Reg., 173. 

107018°— 19 5 



66 LIFE OF HENRY BAIIE"ARD. 

thereto on the difficulties attending common schools and their rem- 
edies. In that same year H. S. Randall wrote him admiringly of his 
power of reading aloud from Coleridge's translation of Wallen- 
stein. In 1846 he was suddenly asked, five days before commence- 
ment, to deliver the $ B K address at Yale. He retired to Point 
Judith Lighthouse, and wrote a skeleton of the address which he suc- 
cessfully delivered. When the American Institute of Instruction 
met at Plymouth, Mass., in the same summer, he was present and 
gave an address upon " The obligation of towns to elevate the char- 
acter of the schools." In the autumn of that year he took a western 
tour of five weeks for his health, since he always found it difficult to 
Avork with moderation. Availing himself of this opportunity to 
extend his educational propaganda, he delivered addresses** at 
Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Sandusky, Cleve- 
land, Columbus, and Cincinnati. Of this and other early journey- 
ings of Barnard, Mayo w^rote : *^ 

He was, perhaps, the first of our emment northern educators, of the many 
who were called to the management of southern educational foundations, to 
visit that section of the Union as an advocate of what has since become in 
fact, though not in legal form, our American system of common schools, for 
all classes and conditions of the people. * * * His early excursions thi'ough 
the Western States, then experimenting on their present systems of public 
institutions, had enlarged his ideas of the possibilities of the common school, 
the most original of our American new depai'tures. 

This tour had momentous results for him; for, during it he met 
his future wife. The story can not be better told than in the words 
of his daughter, Miss Josephine E. Barnard, contained in a letter 
>vritten on May 15, 1915 : 

My mother's maiden name was Josephine Desuoyers, and my father met her 
in Detroit, when on a Wsit to his classmate, Mr. (afterwards General) Alpheug 
Williams. The very day he arrived Mr. Williams urged him to go with him 
to the wedding of a frieud. My father pleaded fatigue after his long journey 
and excused himself. " You'll be sorry if j^ou don't go," says Williams, " there 
is going to be an awfully pretty bi-idesmaid," and he went, to his everlasting 
blessing. My grandfather, Peter Desnoyers, was sent away from Paris in 1790 
to escape the conscription. His father, Jean Charles Desnoyers, was a member 
of the Garde Nationale (Bataillon de Henri Quatre) Juillet, 1789, and his 
brevet certifies that he served " avec toutes les qualities d'un digne citoyen." 
Nevertheless, he seems to have thought France a poor place for his 18-year- 
old son, and bought for him an interest in the Scioto Land Co. and sent him 
to America, where he arrived at Havre de Grace, Md., after a voyage of 60 
days. On landing, the French (settlers) went directly to Gallipolis, Ohio, 
which was supposed to be within the company's domain. They found that the 
title deeds were worthless, the land company failed entirely, and the settle- 
ment was ultimately broken up. Later, young Desnoyers accompanied Wagner's 
army, on its way to the Northwestern Territory, He arrived in Detroit in 
June, 1796, and after some struggling years, became a successful merchant 

** 15 Am. J. Ed., 390. « Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1902, p. 892. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS IN RHODE ISLAND. 67 

and a prominent member of the prosperous community. He married a French 
Canadian, Miss Marie Louise Gobielle, and my mother was the youngest of 
12 children. 

On September 6, 1847, Barnard returned to Detroit to marry Miss 
Desnoyers and spent his honeymoon with her at Saratoga Springs. 
This marriage, between a French Roman Catholic and a Connecticut 
Puritan, turned out to be a most happy one. Five children were 
born to them, of whom two unmarried daughters alone survive. The 
only son, Henry 'D. Barnard, after studying at Heidelberg, returned 
to America, and settled in the practice of law at Detroit. He had 
fine prospects, and entering local politics was chosen president of 
the city council, but died in 1884 at the early age of 32, leaving a 
widow and an infant daughter. Mrs. Barnard was an invalid for 
the last 20 years of her life and died in 1891. In writing a note of 
sympathy to the bereaved husband. Miss Emily V. Mason, who had 
been an early friend in Detroit of Mrs. Barnard, remarked upon 
her purity and goodness, her refusal to dance, her delicacy which 
led her to refuse ever to wear a low-necked dress, and the " simplicity 
and modesty with which she met your poetic courtship.'* 



Chapter VI. 

STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTI- 
CUT (1850-1855). 



When Barnard resigned his joosition in 1849, a printed circular 
was sent to a number of persons, proposing that a professorship of 
popular education be established in the department of philosophy 
aiul the arts in Yale College and that Barnard be selected to fill the 
chair,' a selection to which the president and prudential committee 
of the college had agreed. If called to the chair, he was expected 
to deliver a brief annual course of lectures, to which all suitable per- 
sons should be admitted, either gratuitously or for a very low fee. 
This coiu'se Avould benefit the student and bring to New Haven a 
large number of persons from nuiny States of the Union, " intending 
to embrace a full course of classical education." The circular stated 
that: 

Tlie cstablisliiiiont of such professorships in our collof^es will tend to give 
tlicin a stronger hold on the popular mind, will unite our higher and lower 
educational institutions by a stronger and more active sympathy, and will help 
to convert our present various and sometimes conflicting modes of instruction 
into a uniform and efficient system. 

Nothing came of the movement, however. About this time Bar- 
nard declined professorships of history and English literature and 
of Latin and Greek in two colleges, and school superintendencies in 
Boston, New York, Cincinnati, and New Orleans.^ Gov.- Sewa^rd 
and others suggested^ that he travel through the country and de- 
liver addresses so as to elevate the public sentiment as to education.* 
He was elected president of the Universities of Indiana and of Mich- 
igan, and had resolved to accept the latter position when an accident 
caused by a runaway horse impaired his health for the time, so that 
he was forced to relinquish the plan." On October 17, 1849," a 
national convention of the friends of common schools was held at 

' On Aug. 15, 1858, Barnard presented to the Yale corporation a plan for the establish- 
ment of a professor.ship of the art of tcacliinK, which was laid on the table. (Stokca 
Memorials of JCminont Yale Men, I, p. 201.) 

■^ 1 Am. .1. Kd., 7:J6. 

^ llii;,'hes, N. E. Mag., N. S., vol. 14, p. r,r,7, ].«<00. 

* In liis career lie Is said to have addressed the legislatures in 10 States and delivered 
lectures In 50 cities. 

1 Am. J. Ed., 738. 

• Rep. of Commls. of Ed., 1902, I, p. 894. 

08 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 69 

Philadelphia. Tlie call for the meeting was signed by Bishop Alonzo 
Potter, Horace Mann, Avho presided over the meeting, Barnard, and 
34 others. Barnard was appointed chairman of the business com- 
mittee, and as such reported a resolution, which was adopted, that a 
committee of five be appointed to prepare a memorial to Congress 
asking the " establishment of a bureau in the home department for 
obtaining and publishing annually statistical information in regard 
to public education in the United States." As chairman of the 
business committee he also proposed 10 topics for consideration 
" relating to the organization and administration of a system of 
public instruction, adapted to different sections of the United States," 
and as chairman of other committees he had the tasks given him of 
preparing rules which ought to regulate the future legislation of 
States and towns concerning the formation of school districts and 
" a digest of the school system and educational systems of the sev- 
eral States." 

At the second convention, held in Philadelphia on August 28, 
1850, Barnard again served on the business committee and reported 
that during the past decade he had collected more than 1,000 docu- 
ments for the purpose of preparing a history of education in the 
United States, upon which he would present a report later. ®^ Dr. 
Barnard made a partial report in August, 1851, to the third conven- 
tion, held in Cleveland, at which time the convention organized itself 
into the American Association for the Advancement of Education. 
Bai;nard was made a member of the standing committee and chair- 
man of a committee to rejiort upon "the value of education to the 
industrial interests of the country." He was also asked to append 
to the published proceedings a " condensed form of the statistics 
which he has collected in regard to systems of education in different 
States'."'^ It was before this association in 1854 that, after speaking 
of the Educational Exhibition in London, which he had recently 
visited, he laid out the Plan of a Central Agency for Education,® 
with a paid secretary, a journal, a library of 32 volumes, including 
a history of national education in the United States, and an educa- 
tional exchange between literary institutions in this and other coun- 
tries. A year later he presided at the New York meeting of the 
association, when, on account of lack of funds, the decision was made 
to take no action in regard to this plan. 

"» At the meeting of the American Institute of Instruction held at Montpelier, Vt., in 
August, 1849, Barnard was present and made some very interesting and spirited remarljs 
upon education. The institute passed a resolution that "we have the utmost confidence 
in Mr. Uarnard's ability to prepare a history of education and that we will afford him 
every aid within our power." 

'This body of educators was succeeded by the National Teachers' Association in 185G. 

» Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1002, I, p. 895 ; 1 Am. J. Ed., 8, 134. 



70 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

We come upon notices of other of Barnard's addresses from tiiiio 
to time. In 1851 he spoke on Progress of a Quarter Century, be- 
fore the American Institute of Instruction at Northampton, Mass., 
and on October 10 he addressed the Connecticut State Teachers' 
Association, at Washington,^ and, praising the society of New Pres- 
t(m in that town, spoke of the great men who came thence. This 
meeting was the first of a series, at each of which Barnard spoke 
for two hours. On October 14, at Colchester, his subject was the 
elements of a good system of public schools; on October 21, at Essex, 
he praised the conditions at Deep River and deplored the lack of 
interest in Essex ; on October 21, at Norwalk, he spoke on the grada- 
tion of schools. Later meetings were those at Glastenbuiy, on Oc- 
tober 28, and Ashford on October 29. The elements he touched upon 
in his Colchester speech** were: (1) A good school law; (2) a good 
schoolhouse; (3) punctual and regular attendance; (4) a good classi- 
fication of schools; (5) a good course of study; (6) a good series of 
textbooks; (7) a good teacher; (8) a good committeeman; (9) a 
good parent; and (10) a good district or societ}^ 

In 18.53, at the Centennial Anniversary of the Linonian Society 
at Yale, he made a fine impromptu speech, when the appointed 
orator f ailed.^° At this time was printed his " Tribute to Gallaudet, 
a discourse in commemoration of the life, character, and services of 
the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, LL. D., delivered before the citizens 
of Hartford, January 7, 1852."^^ This address was also delivered 
at New Britain in 1851, at the annual meeting of the Connecticut 
State Teachers' Association,^^ of which Barnard was president in 
that year.^* Of this presidency he wrote that he " tried to bring 
the teachers into an active participation in the work of school ad- 
vancement and to the responsible management of all the essential 
agencies of professional improvement." About this time Barnard 
received three signal honors, being granted the degree of LL. D. by 
Yale and Union in 1852 and by Harvard in 1853. 

On August 7, 1849, Barnard had been chosen principal of the 
Connecticut Normal School, at New Britain,^* and superintendent 
of common schools of the State, under the act of June 22, 1849.^^ 

•31 Am. J. Ed., 521. 

»» V. Conn. Com. Sch. Jour., 59. 

"N. E. Mag., N. S., vol. 14, p. 563. 

11 With an appendix containing a history of deaf-mute Instruction and institutions and 
other documents, pp. 220. Part of the matter Is reprinted from the Conn. Com. School 
Journal. An edition in 1852, with the History of the American Asylum, is said to have 
contained pp. 268. 

12 15 Am. J. Ed., 593. 

" The association had been formed at a convention in Hartford County in 1846. 

"Agitation for the establishment of the Lexington Normal School began in 1835, and 
the school was opened in 1839. Gov. Seward, of New York, recommended one in that 
State, and it was opened in 1844. N. E. A. rroc, 1901, p. 394. 

"> 14 Am. J. Ed., 274. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 7l 

Holding these positions, he delivered the dedicatory address at tlio 
opening of the school's building on June 4, 1851, then beholding the 
consummation of the project urged by him upon the State 13 years 
earlier." In his address of an hour,^^ Barnard glanced at the idea 
of a school with groups of scholars under the systematic training of 
a teacher and traced its history to Christ's taking a child in his arms. 
Then he gave a historical sketch of normal schools from the found- 
ing of an institution in Rheims in 1681, by Jean Baptiste de la. Salle, 
for the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, and from Herman 
Franke's orphan house in Halle. There were then 264 teachers' semi- 
naries in Europe and only 7 in the United States. Next he dwelt upon 
the course of instruction and, in closing, he called the attention of his 
hearers to the fact that no normal school had failed. If this one 
fails, the failure will be due to lack of adequate entrance qualifica- 
tions, sufficient permanence of residence, adequate appropriation from 
the State, or suitable encouragement given " by adequate compensa- 
tion and continued employment from year to year in the same school 
of weir educated and thoroughly trained teachers." On the same day 
Rev. Horace Bushnell also spoke and told how Barnard had con- 
sulted him in 1838 as to giving himself up to the public schools. 
He made his choice to do so, and — 

after encountering years of untoward hindi-ance here, winning golden opinions 
meantime from every otlier State in tlie Republic and from ministers of educa- 
tion from almost every nation of the old world by his thoroughly practical 
understanding of all that pertains to the subject, after raising also into vigorous 
action the school system of another State and setting it for-vward on a tide of 
progress, he returned to the scenes of his beginnings and permits us to con- 
gratulate both him and ourselves on the prospect that his original choice and 
purpose are finally to be fulfilled. * * * He has our confidence. We are 
to have his life and experience. 

The idea of a normal school, first enunciated by Olmsted in 1816,^*' 
had been emphasized by Gallaudet in 1825, who had urged, in articles 
printed in the Connecticut Observer, at Hartford, that teaching be 
made a " profession," and that there be established " institutions for 
the training up of instructors for their sphere of labor, as well as 
instructions to prepare young men for the duties of the divine, the 
lawyer, or the physician." 

In 1838, Barnard, speaking in the Connecticut house of representa- 
tives," said that there was need of "better education and special 
training of teachers for their delicate and difficult labor." " Every 
man who received his early education in the district schools of Con- 
necticut must be conscious of the defective instruction," due both to a 

lack of knowledge on the part of the teacher and of a "practical 

_ ^ 

" Monroe, 19 ; 1 Am. J. Ed., 736. i" Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, I, 793. 

" 10 Am. J. Ed., 34. » 10 Am. J, Ed., 24. 



72 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

ability to make what lie does know available. He has never studied 
and practiced his art — the almost creative art of teaching." It is 
" idle to expect good schools, until we have good teachers * * * 
AVith better teachers will come better compensation and more perma- 
nent employment. The people pay noAV quite enough for the article 
they get. It is dear at even the miserably low price at which so much 
of it can be purchased." 

In his first rej^ort as secretary of the State board of education, in 
1S39, he urged the establishment of at least one seminary for teach- 
ers and, while defending in the house a bill for teachers' institutes 
or a seminary, he maintained that good teachers would make better 
schools, and that, in time, " college graduates will no longer be hired 
to teach the alphabet, but accomplished female teachers, who can do 
the work of the primary schools best." Teachers were the " natural 
guardians," in his opinion, of this great interest, at least they are the 
cooperators with the parents in this work of educating the rising 
generation to take the place of that which is passing off the stage. 
They are the chosen priesthood of education. They must bear the 
task on their shoulders. Teachers' institutes are good, but should 
" create in the existing teachers a thirst for something better than 
can be given in any temporary course." 

In the report of 1840, recommending an appropriation for a 
teachers"' seminary, Barnard said in behalf of the commissioners, 
that a teacher without preliminary training is like a " medical prac- 
titioner Avho commences his labors without the knowledge of the 
settled principles of his art, but expects to gain his knowledge of his 
profession in the course of his practice." Again, in his report of 
1841, he spoke of the need of examining boards for teachers in each 
count}^ or senatorial district, and of the further need of improve- 
ment of the sources relied on to supply teachers. He suggested that 
older students in the schools might be taught how to teach the 
younger ones ; teachers' classes might be instituted in the winter and 
spring; and most of all there was a need of separate institutions in 
which the exclusive attention of able men should be devoted to " the 
distinct object of giving the greatest practical elevation ^nd efficiency 
to the profession of common school teacher." For the last time in 
that report, Barnard urged a normal school and thought that this 
institution had better be confined in the outset to the preparation of 
female teachers. Those Avho attend it should be obliged to promise 
to teach two or three years in the common schools. The good that 
they would do would not be confined to the districts in which they 
Avould teach. An appropriation of $10,000, together with what could 
be raised by individuals, would suffice to give the plan a fair trial. 

After Barnard had gone to Rhode Island, in 1844, a committee of 
eight members of the house of representatives was appointed to con- 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 73 

sider the state of education in Connecticut and report to the next 
session of the legislature. In May, 1845, they recommended the 
establishment of a normal school, since " teaching is an art." Nothing 
was then done, but in 1846, the general assembly approved, in the 
main, a plan of the joint standing committee of education for a nor- 
mal school. In 1847, Mr. Beers, the superintendent of education, 
recommended the opening of such a school, since it would give an 
opportunity to teachers to learn their art before taking schools. The 
report was referred to the joint committee, which visited normal 
schools in Massachusetts and New York and recommended to the 
general assembly of 1848 the establishment of such a school. An- 
other year passed before anything was done, and then an act was 
passed for the establishment of a seminary for the training of teach- 
ers in the art of instructing and governing the common schools of the 
State. For this purpose the sum of $11,000 was appropriated, which 
amount had been paid by two banks as a bonus for their charters. 
On February 1, 1850, the school was located at New Britain, because 
of inducements offered by the people of that town. Mr. Seth J. 
North gave $6,000, and much of the cost of the $25,000 building came 
from other citizens of New Britain.^^'' Without waiting for the com- 
l^letion of the building, or the purchase of apparatus or library,^" 
the school was opened on^May 45 , 185Q, -^under as favorable auspices, 
as to pupils and opporti\nities for imparting practical knowledge, 
as any other of the seven normal schools then existing in the Union." 
At the close of the first week there were 55 students, who were al- 
lowed to use as practice schools four district schools Avith 300 
students. 

When Barnard accepted the principalship, he did so with the 
understanding that an assistant principal should be appointed to 
take immediate charge of the school, and Hev. T. D. P. Stone as- 
sumed that position, leaving for it his former post as superintendent 
in the department of instruction in the Massachusetts State Reform 
School at Westboro. Barnard gave such attention ^^ as he " found 
compatible with the general supervision of the common schools of 
tlie State, for which his studies and previous experience " had " in 
some measure qualified him." 

B}' the act which established the normal school and placed it 
under the direction of a board of eight trustees, the superintendency 
of the common schools had been united with the duties of the prin- 
cipal, instead of with those of the commissioner of the school fund. 
This was done at the recommendation of the commissioner, and 
the new officer was given a salary of $3 per diem while actually em- 
ployed and his expenses while traveling, with an allowance for sta- 

"=> 10 Am. J. Ed., 47. «« 32 Am. J. Ea., 582. 21 14 Am. J. Ed., 275. 



74 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

tioneiy, printing, and clerk hire. The superintendent had placed 
upon him the duty to collect information from school visitors and to 
submit an annual report to the general assembly, with a statement 
of the present condition of the common schools, plans for their 
improvement and for a better organization of the common school 
system. During each autumn, he should hold in each county a 
school or convention of teachers for the purpose of interesting them 
in the best modes of governing and teaching their schools.^^ This 
law provided for an encouragement of local taxation, for graded 
schools, and for a reduction of the number of school officers, and 
made possible the return of school management to the town. It 
is said that there were at that time in Connecticut 1,650 independent 
school districts, 10,000 school officers, and 75,000 children of school 
age.^^ 

In his first report, made to the legislature at its session in May, 
1850,2^ Barnard laid out his plans for the normal school. Even 
one term in residence there would be of use; even a visit to the 
school for an hour by a teacher or candidate for teaching would 
be encouraged. TTie curriculum would include English, pemuan- 
ship, drawing, vocal music, physiology, and to advanced students, 
agricultural chemistry and domestic economy. Subjects, rather than 
textbooks, would be taught. Elementary subjects would be reviewed 
by practice on blackboards and by aid of maps and cheap and simple 
apparatus. Lectures would be given on the history and theory of 
education, school architecture, and tlie legal position of the teacher. 
The pupils were expected to visit schools in their vacations and to 
attend educational meetings. Barnard believed it to be important 
to cultivate a truly religious feeling, to lay the foundation and im- 
plant the motives of a truly religious life, to enable teachers, by 
l)recept and example, rightly to develop the moral faculties and to 
define and enforce the performance of all the great primary moral 
duties in tlie schools which may be placed under their charge. 

Consequently, every suitable effort, consistent with perfect religious tolera- 
tion, will be made to give a deep moral and religious tone to all the exercises 
and to the whole character of the institution, from a deep conviction that 
a sense of responsibility to God and love to man must form the mainspring 
of a teacher's activity, while it is the surest pledge of success. 

There would be occasional lectures from nonresident scholars. 
The faculty would endeavor to fiiid positions for the pupils, and 
w^uld try to — 

grapple, as with bands of steel and yet only by the sympathy of a common 
pursuit and the sense of reciprocal benefit, the pupils to the school and the 

2*14 Am. J. Ed., 275. 

*' Barnard's History of l^islation in Connecticut respecting common schools, Rep. of 
U. S. Commis. of Ed. 1896-97, I, 794. 
» 32 Am. J. Ed., 582. 



SUPERINTENDEISTT OF EDUCATIOlSr IN CONNECTICUT. 75 

teachers ol' the State to each other and to unite all hearts and all hands in 
the great work of the more complete, practical, and universal education of 
the children of Connecticut. 

The officers of the school, so as to extend its influence, intended to 
be present at the teachers' institutes throughout the State. 

This school was a success from the start. It is true ^^ that for two 
years it was little more tlian a permanent normal institute, receiving 
teachers and pupils of all grades for even less than one term, and 
adjusting its terms to those of the winter and summer schools. In 
the third year a permanent annual appropriation of $4,000 made it 
possible to organize a systematic course of instruction. Before 1860, 
one thousand five hundred teachers had studied there, of which 
number one-third were still teaching, a fact which shows the lack of 
permanence in the occupation.'" In 1855, after the school had been 
four years in operation, Barnard wrote,^^ as he retired from office, 
that he hoped : (a) That the institution will become an indispensable 
feature of the common school system, having as one reason for his 
hope that no normal school once opened had ever been abandoned; 
(b) that it will furnish a place where young people " can acquire the 
science and art of teaching, without a series of experiments made at 
the expense of health, faculties, and the affections of the children," 
and will give teachers what men entering other professions receive 
from their preliminary training; (c) that it will make teaching a 
"permanent employment"; (d) that it will help to "verify the 
vocation of persons entering the profession and make a school an 
uncomfortable place for a person whose heart is not in the work " ; 
(e) that the schools conducted by the graduates will become models 
for the other districts and that a wholesome spirit of emulation will 
thus be provoked; (/) that the standard of the qualifications recjuired 
from teachers and the wages paid to them will be raised, that old 
schoolhouses will disappear, and that boarding will no longer remain 
a hindrance to the formation of a permanent well-qualified body of 
teachers; (g) that the school will unite with the teachers' institutes 
to inspire and strengthen a professional feeling among teachers; (h) 
that it will build up a professional literature; and (i) that, in a few 
pupils, it will produce an "enthusiastic attachment to their future 
profession as the noblest, holiest department of human exertion " 
and through them will give " an impulse of the most powerful kind 
to educartion." All that the officers of the school asked was a " fair 
field and reasonable cooperation " from the people of the State. 

26 Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, I, 794. 
» 10 Am. J. Ed., 47. 
" 32 Am. J. Ed.. 582. 



76 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

During Barnard's term of office he had the hearty support of the 
State administration. Gov. Thomas PI. Se3'mour, in his message 
to the legislature in 1850, wrote thus of Barnard : 

Though laboring often " under the most discouraging circumstances, he has 
steadily pursued the lofty purpose which he has had in view, with an industry 
and pel-severance which nothing short of a well-founded faith in the justice of 
the cause could have inspired. From his report it will be seen that, while 
rt-hools, in connection with other institutions, are making education the com- 
mon property of every child in our midst, there is still left room in our system 
(if public instruction to carry out and enlarge what our fathers so admii'ably 
began. 

The report alluded to, viz, Barnard's first and the fifth of the 
superintendent of common schools to the general assembly, is a 
pamphlet of 160 pages. From it we learn that teachers' institutes' 
had been held in every county and were attended by 75 teachers, 
mostly from the winter schools: 

The object and legitimate scope of these meetings must be, not to become a 
substitute for the patient, thorough, and protracted study which the mastership 
of any branch of knowledge requires, nor yet for the practical drilling which a 
well-conducted normal school alone can give, but to refresh the recollection of 
principles already acquired, by i:apid reviews and by new and safe methods 
of presenting the same, to communicate hints and suggestions in aid of self- 
improvement from wise and experienced instructors, to solve the difficulties 
and doubts of the inexperienced and to enkindle through the sympathies of 
numbers, engaged in the same pursuits, the aspirations of a true professional 
feeling. 

He attended 12 meetings of teachers' associations and suggested a 
small grant for them. General supervision had been given to schools. 
He had advised them on all possible subjects, but regretted the lack 
of reliable information upon many points. 

Barnard w'rote: 

Scattered all over our territory, through every city and village aiid neighbor- 
hood and even in the secluded nook, or rocky and wooded waste, if thei'e the 
family has planted itself with its domestic relations, the district school is to be 
seen, with its doors open to receive the children of all classes, for at least four 
months in the year, and these schools, in connection with private schools of 
various grades and the press and the pulpit and the practical working of our 
domestic and civil instructions, secure not only an elementary education, btit a 
vigorous self-training, as the birthright and the birth blessing of every child 
of the State. 

More must yet be accomplished. The parental apathy must be re- 
moved, districts should be abolished, and a graded system estab- 
lished in each town or school society. Public lectures should be 
given, articles written for the press, essays or tracts published upon 
such topics as the history of education in Connecticut, the actual con- 
dition of education there and a comparison Avith the condition in 

» 15 Am. J. Ed., 276. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 77 

other States, school architecture, the attendance and classification of 
children, school systems for cities and large villages, the normal 
school textbooks and school apparatus, school supervision, school sup- 
port, parental and public interest. More money must be appro- 
priated for schools. 

As education is a want not felt by those wlio need it most for tliGmsolvcs 
or their children ; as It is a duty which avarice, or a short-sighted self-interest, 
may disregard, as it Is a right which is inherent in every child, but which the 
child can not enforce, and as it is an interest, both public and individual, 
which can not safely be neglected, it is unwise and unjust to leave it to the 
sense of parental duty, or the unequal and insufficient resources which in- 
dividuals and local authorities under the stimulus of ordinary motives will 
provide. If it is thus left, there will be the educated few and the uneducated 
many. This is the uniform testimony of all history. The leading object should 
be for the State to stimulate and secure, but not supersede, the proper effoi'ts 
of parents and local authorities, and to see that the means thus provided are 
so applied as to make the advantages of education as equal as the varying cir- 
cumstances of families and local communities will admit. 

In his next annual report,^^ Barnard alluded to the holding of 14 
teachers' institutes, with an attendance of 1,200 persons, at an 
expenditure of only $400. He expressed the opinion that there were 
too many private schools and that an educational qualification should 
be required of voters. Early and regular attendance should be re- 
quired of each child, at least until 10 or 12 years of age. 

Every child should attend the be«t school, be it public or private ; but, other 
things being equal, a public scl>tol of the same grade will be the best school ; 
and, if it is the best school in all the essential features of a school, the social 
and indirect benefits to the individual and the community from the early 
school associations of all the children, from the families of the poor and rich, 
the more and the less favored in occupation and outward circumstances, are 
such that, as far as practicable, all the children of a neighborhood should 
attend the public school. 

The State of Connecticut consisted of two classes of commmiities. 
The majority of the people yet lived in the country. Not foreseeing 
the tremendous growth of the urban population, Barnard wrote that : 

First in point of numbers, here as elsewhere, the agricultural population will 
ever be of the highest importance to the dignity and strength of the 
State * * * The sparseness of the population forbids the concentration of 
schools into large districts aad the conseqxient gradation of schools, which is so 
desirable and even essential to the thoroughness of school instruction. 

On the other hand, in the country, there is found more "bodily 
energy and the freshness and force of mind which are consequent 
upon it." The country schools had usually been badly taught and the 
scholars had no other advantages from library or lyceum. Among 
the improvements urged are better schoolhouses, the employment of 
female teachers for small children during the whole year, the gath- 

» Sixth report, p. 168. 



78 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAED. 

ering of older children together in the winter from a " wide circuit 
of territory," the fostering of the taste for reading by the establish- 
ment of school libraries, and the modification of the course of study, 
so that " it should deal less with books and more with real objects in 
nature around, more with facts and principles which can be illustra- 
ted by references to the actual business of life." In the manufacturing 
districts, on the other hand, the children need different treatment. 
There gradation of classes is possible. Drawing, mathematics, and 
needlework should be emphasized. Teachers should be able to ex- 
plain elementary natural science and " should take decided interest 
in everything that related to the moral and intellectual improve- 
ment of the people." 

Libraries of good books, selected in reference to the intellectual wants of 
the old and the young, should be provided in every vilhige. To create a taste 
for reading should be a leading object in the labors of teachers and lecturers. 
AH that the school, even the best, where so much is to be done in the way of 
disciplining the faculties.^o all that tlie ablest lecture, when accompanied by 
illustrations and expei'iments, can do toward unfolding the many branches of 
knowledge and filling the mind with various Information, is but little comiwred 
with the thoughtful perusal of good books, from evening to evening, extending 
through a series of years. These are the great instruments of self culture, 
when their truths are inwrought by reflection into the very structure of the 
mind and made to shed a light on the daily labors of the workshop. 

Small museums and libraries, with rooms for reading, games, con- 
versation, and lectures, will bring all classes together. High schools, 
evening schools, reform schools, uniformity of textbooks, are all 
advocated in this report. 

In 1852 the Connecticut Common Scliool Journal was resumed 
and was continued b}'^ Barnard until January 1, 1855, when he turned 
it over to the State Teachers' Association. In his seventh report, 
that for 1852, he wrote that nine teachers' institutes had been held 
during the year, with an attendance of 900. Each lasted from IMon- 
day until Friday, and at each institute educational addresses had 
been delivered, especially by the clergy. The gradation and con- 
solidation of schools, the examination of teacliors by county inspec- 
tors, the distribution of school money on tiie basis of attendance are 
among tlie subjects discussed. In July, 1852, Barnard resigned his 
position on account of his health, for the restoration of which he 
liad been ordered to take a sea voyage.^^ The trustees declined to 
accept his resignation, but asked him to take a leave of absence. He 
did so and a trip to Europe proved so restorative that he was able 
to go on with his work. In August, 1853, at New Haven, Barnard 
lectured before the American Institute of Instruction upon " Practi- 
cal lessons to be drawn from an educational tour of Europe." On 

*» 15 Am. J. Ed., 307. » 15 Am. J. Ed., 329. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 79 

his travels lie had collected information and ideas, some of which 
he thought might well be adopted in America, though — 

the public schools of Europe, with their institutions of government and society, 
do not tHrn out such practical and efficient men as our own common schools, 
acting in concert with our religious, social, and political institutions ; * * * 
but this superiority is not due to the school, but it is gained in spite of the 
school. Our aim should be to make the school better and to bring all the 
influences of home and society, of religion and free institutions, to perfect 
harmony with the best teaching of the best teacher. 

He found the Prussian youths ^^ "subjected to the depressing and 
repressing influences of a despotic government and of a state of so- 
ciety in which everything is fixed both by law and the iron rule of 
custom." On October 28, 1853, Barnard addressed the Barnard and 
Gallaudet Library Societies in the New Britain Normal School upon 
the results which may be reasonably anticipated from an improved 
system of popular education, instancing as such results: (1) In- 
creased productive power of manual labor, (2) improvements in 
machinery, (3) better care and higher utility with which articles of 
daily use would be constructed, (4) the increase of cheap, innocent, 
and humanizing amusements, and (5) the spread of a better and 
more powerful American literature. 

In his eighth report, that for 1853, Barnard referred to 10 teach- 
ers' institutes which had been held with an attendance of 1,000 
teachers. Nine teachers' association meetings had been held and 275 
addresses delivered.^^ At the New Britain Normal School there had 
been 324 students during the year 1852, and 183 were in residence 
tliere when he made his report. He had made arrangements with 
the managers at the penitentiary at Wethersfield whereby the con- 
victs were employed in making school apparatus, which thus could 
be mqre cheaply supplied to the schools. " Our aim should be to 
make the schools better and to bring the influences of home and so- 
ciety, of religion and free institutions, into perfect harmony with 
the best teaching of the best teacher." In accordance with this wide 
purpose he sought for the primary schools female teachers "of the 
requisite tact, patience, versatility, and prompt and kind sym- 
pathies." He referred to the many monographs which he had in 
preparation, to the kinds of schools needed in the different classes 
of communities, and to the memory of Dr. Gallaudet — "the b&st 
lights of my own mind have been drawn and fed from his wise coun- 
sels and the best purposes of my own heart have been strengthened 
b_v the beauty of his daily life." 

This report is largely devoted to his extremely valuable History of 
Education in Connecticut, of which a second edition was printed in 

« IB Am. J. Ed., 331. ** 15 Am. J. Ed., 307. 



80 ' LIFE OF HENRY BAFlNARD. 

185C,^* During these years, his fame became international. Dr. 
Wimmer visited the United States for tAvo ycars/^ and on his re- 
turn to Germany wrote :^'^ " I have often had occasion to admire tho 
magic influence of Dr. Barnard, his brilliant powers of eloquence, 
and his great administrative talent." He is a " veritable reformer 
of popular education." *' Karl Quentin, another German scholar, 
visited Barnard in Hartford in 1850 and wrote that Rhode Island 
owed to his farsighted and energetic administration a school system 
to be compared to Massachusetts.^^ The Swede, P. J. Siljestroem,^* 
also visited him about the same time.*° Thomas Rainey, editor of the 
Ohio Journal of Education, made a tour through New England in 
January, 1852, and stopped at Hartford to see Barnard, finding him 
at work in a corner of a dingy garret in the old State House, trying 
to escape the rain w'hich dripped in from a leak in the roof, and de- 
scribed him as " the perfect embodiment of all the educational interest 
and intelligence of New England. He has done more than any other 
10 men in New England for education.*^ In 1855, Prof. LeRoy, of 
Liege, called him " that indefatigable apostle of progress and dis- 
tinguished educator."'*^ 

In 1854, Barnard was commissioned by the governor of Connecticut 
as a delegate to the International Exposition of Educational Methods 
held in St. Martin's Hall, London, and on his return, he made an oral 
report to the Connecticut legislature.*^ On July 4, he was one of the 
800 people who attended the centennial dinner of the Society of Arts 
in the Crystal Palace and was honored by being asked to sit at the 
head table and answer to the toast " Our foreign visitors." ** While 
in London, Barnard made arrangements with the principal delegates, 
school officers, and teachers, to secure a reliable account of the systems 
of national education in their several States by men familiar with the 
details thereof, for publication in his projected Journal of Education. 
This project developed into the volume prepared while United States 

8< Afterwards reprinted in Am. J. Ed., IV, 657, 710; V, 114; XIII, 725; XIV, 244. 
2 Conn. Com. Sch. Jour., N. S., 505. Jules Paroy, Historie UniversaUe de la Pedagogie, 
1883, p. 366, praised Barnard. 

36 Wimmer in 1846 had been the first person to call Barnard's attention to Proebel. 
2 Conn. Com. Sch. Jour. N. S., 505. Jules Taroy, Ilistoire UniversaUe de la Ped.igogie, 
1883, p. 3<>6, praised Barnard. 

3° Vide Conn. School Jour., 1855, p. 89, tor review. " Die Kirche und Schule in 
Nord Amerika," Leipzig, 1853, was the book. 

s' Hughes, p. 570. 

^ Rcisebilder u. Studien aus dem Norden dcr Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Zwel 
Theile in einen Bande. Ost-West. Arnsberg, 1851, pp. xvi + 152, vl + 209. 

3a Ed. Institutions of the U. S., English ed., 1853. 

*" He wrote on Apr. 23, 1850, after the visit, that he had spent Easter as the guest of 
Miss Emily Harper, in Baltimore, and must soon return home. 

" Hughes, p. 569. 

^ Hughes, p. 570. 

*3 Monroe, p. 27. 

<*Vide 2 Commis. Conn. Sch. Jour. (N. S.), 88, for his speech. A printed report of 
Barnard's impression of the exposition was also made to the governor of Connecticut. 



SUPERINTENDENT OE EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 8.1 

Commissioner of Education in 1870, but the original plan was much 
broader. The work was to consist of six parts: (1) Elementary edu- 
cation; (2) secondary education; (3) universities, colleges, and 
other institutions of superior instruction; (4) professional, classical, 
and special instruction; (5) supplemental instruction by means of 
libraries, lectures, and evening schools; and (6) societies and mu- 
seums for the promotion of education, science, literature, and the 
arts.*^ 

At this time, too, Barnard was vainly hoping for the accomplish- 
ment of another of his desires. In 1837, noting that the Eensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute, at Troy, inadequately met the demand for 
engineers and practical chemists and geologists, Barnard called 
public attention to the need of special schools for teaching, Avith 
" special reference to the great national industries — to commerce, 
locomotion, machinery, manufactures, mining, engineering, and 
civil constructions of all kinds." This address was issued in 1839 
and made a part of his report in 1839-40. He reissued it in 1847, 
while in Ehode Island, and again in 1853, in a volume entitled " Na- 
tional Education in Europe." In 1852, Mr. Samuel Colt, the in- 
ventor of the revolver, contemplated the establishment of evening 
classes, which plan developed into one for a School of Mechanical 
Engineering and a Polytechnic School. Two years afterward, Mr. 
Colt made Barnard one of the trustees and asked him to gather 
information, which he did, printing several articles in the American 
Journal of Education. In 1862, Colt died, and it was found that he 
had revoked by a codicil the provision in his will intended to create 
this institution. Mrs. Colt, in the succeeding year, requested Bar- 
nard to resume the collection of information. A volume on Military 
Education was printed in advance of the rest, but after the armory 
was burned in 1865, Mrs. Colt abandoned the plan entirely. 

In 1854, one of Barnard's publications, which had a very wide in- 
fluence, appeared in its final form — the book entitled " School Archi- 
tecture, or Contributions to the Improvement of Schoolhouses in the 
United States." In 1838 he prepared an Essay on School Archi- 
tecture, as a lecture. This was published in the Connecticut Com- 
mon School Journal for 1841, and submitted as a report on school- 
houses to the Connecticut Legislature in 1842. The joint committco 
refused to recommend the publication, though it was the " most 

*^ See also National Education in Europe, containing not only Barnard's observations 
in two visits to Europe but also the reports of C. E. Stowe to Ohio In 1837, A. D. Bache 
to Girard College in 1839, Horace Mann to Massachusetts in 1846, and Joseph Kay to 
Oxford University in 1850. Of this book the Westminster Review for October, 1854, 
Vol. VI, N. S., p. 568, said that it contained " more valuable information and statistics 
than can be found in any one volume in the English language," and that it was " the 
first volume which groups, under one view, the varied experiences of nearly all civilized 
countries." 

107018°— 19 6 



82 LIFE OF HENEY BARNARD. 

thorough, systematic, and practical discussion of the subject yet 
made." Only through strenuous efforts was the publication secured, 
and then only on condition that Barnard bear the expense for wood- 
cuts and part of that for printing. Of the various forms of the book, 
over 100,000 copies were printed, without any pecuniary return to 
the author. In 1848, Barnard published an enlarged edition of the 
book, under the title " School Architecture." In this edition he said: 

The subject was forced on the attention of the author, in the very outset of 
liis lai>ors in the field of public education. Go where he would, in city or 
country, he encountered the district schoolhouse standing in disgraceful contrast 
with every other structure designed for public or domestic use. Its location, 
construction, furniture, 'and arrangements seemed intended to hinder and not 
promote, to defeat and not perfect the work which was to be carried on within 
and without its walls. The attention of parents and school officers was early 
and earnestly called to the close connection between a good schoolhouse and a 
good school and to the great principle that to make an edifice good for school 
purposes, it should be built for children at school and their teachers, for 
children differing in age, sex, size, and studies, and ther-«fore requiring different 
accommodations, for children engaged sometimes in study and sometimes in 
recitation, for children who.se health and success in study require that they 
shall be frequently and every day in the open air for exercise and recreation 
and at all times supplied with pure air to breathe, for children who are to 
CKicupy it in the hot days of summer and the cold days of winter, and for 
periods of time in different parts of the day in positions which become weari- 
some if the seats are not in all respects comfortable and which may affect 
symmetry of form and length of life, if the construction and relative heights 
of the seats and desks which they occupy are not properly attended, for chil- 
dren whos« manners and morals, whose habits of order, cleanliness, and punctu- 
ality, whose temper, love of study, and of the school are in no inconsiderable 
degi'ee affected by the attractive or repulsive location and appearance, the inex- 
pensive outdoor arrangements and the internal construction of the place where 
they spend or should spend a large part of the most Impressionable part of 
their lives. This place, too, It should be borne in mind, is to be occupied by a 
teacher, whose health and daily happiness are affected by most of the various, 
circumstances above alluded to and whose best plans of order, classification, 
discipline, and recitation may be utterly baffled, or greatly promoted, by the 
manner in which the schoolhouse may be located, lighted, warmed, ventilated, 
and seated. With these general views of school architecture, this essay was 
originally written. 

The book Avas indorsed by the National Convention of Friends of 
Public Education at Philadelphia in August, 1850, and was repub- 
lished in its fifth edition in 1854 in a volume containing 464 pages. 
In this final form the work comprised :*® ( 1 ) An exposition of errors 
in building schools; (2) a discussion of purposes and principles to be 
observed in building them; (3) descriptions of a variety of plans; 
(4) illustrations of the arrangements of seats and improvements in 
warming and ventilation; (5) a catalogue of maps, globes, and 



** .\nother work of Barnard's issued about this time was ' Hints and Metliods for the 
Use of Teachers," pp. 128. 



SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION IN CONNECTICUT. 83 

other means of visible illustration with pieces; (6) a list of books 
on education and such as are suitable for school libraries; (7) rules 
for preservation of schoolhouses ; (8) examples of exercises suitable 
for the dedication of schoolhouses. 

By 1854, as his successor, J. D. Philbrick, said, Barnard " had done 
more than any other man to shape the educational policy of the 
Nation." *" At the beginning of the next year he resigned his posi- 
tion on account of ill health and in the hope that he might be able 
to devote all his time and energy to " certain educational under- 
takings of a national character " — that is, to the publication of the 
American Journal of Education. He was succeeded by his associate 
principal in the State Normal School. The " long-deferred hopes of 
a better day for our common schools " were " beginning to be realized 
and the seed he scattered with a bountiful broadcast hand " was 
"springing up into an abundant harvest."*^ In his first report Mr. 
Philbrick wrote: 

I occupy the place that has been filled by one whose eminent abilities, wise 
counsels, and abundant labors in the cause of popular education have merited 
and secured the highest respect and confidence of the people of the State. He 
embarked in this enterprise of beneficence when there were few to encourage 
and aid and many to discourage and to oppose. He had pioneer work to do. 
He had to encounter the jealousies of party, the prejudices of ignorance, and 
the hostilities of a blind, though honest, conservatism, which could see nothing 
In his plans of improvement but destruction to the old landmarks of the 
fathers. In retiring he leaves a different state of things. He has enjoyed the 
satisfaction of witnessing these obstacles gradually melt away before the power 
of truth, and the friends of progress constantly Increase in number and power 
till his long-cherished hope of seeing Connecticut regain her ancient proud place 
in the front rank of the educating States seems about to be realized, that 
blessed day ushered in when every school in the State shall be good enough for 
the best and cheap enough for the poorest." 

At the time of his resignation the Connecticut Common School 
Journal said: 

Though scarcely yet arrived at the meridian of manhood, Dr. Barnard hag 
already achieved the labors of a lifetime and has furnished to the world an 
example of devotion to the cause of popular education in an elevated sphere 
with which it would be difficult to find a parallel.'*^ 

"" Henry Barnard, the American Educator," in Mass. Teacher for January, 18.58. 

«1 Am. J. Ed., 650. 

"N. S., vol. 2, p. 306. On Oct. 23, 1854, Barnard wrote the State Teachers' A.ssocia- 
tion that on account of illness he would not bp able to attend the moetirm at Norwich. 
He had resigned his position, but hoped still to work with the teachers and that they 
would support his successor. 



Chapter VII. 

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION (1855-1860) 
AND THE CHANCELLORSHIP OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
WISCONSIN (1858-1860). 



Wlien Barnard retired from his official post in Connecticut in 
1855, he set himself to the task of publishing an educational maga- 
zine. For this task he was in many respects remarkably well fitted. 
His wide travel, his comprehensive reading, his extensive acquaint- 
ance with scholars were of great value for this purpose, as were his 
indomitable persistence and superb enthusiasm. He lacked capital, 
however; was not a good business manager; and, curiously enough, 
after all his experience with the public, he was no popularizer and 
did not realize the need of writing readable articles, if a large body 
of subscribers is to be obtained. Unable to procure a large body of 
contributors in America, Barnard was forced to rely on his own pen 
and on reproduction and translation of the writings of other men in 
foreign lands and foreign languages. The contents, fairly well 
diversified at first, grew less sp_jind the volumes assumed more of 
a monographic characfefT^ccording as some subject was uppermost 
in Barnard's mind. He was not only editor, but also proprietor of 
the American Journal of Education, whose 31 large octavo volumes, 
each containing about 800 pages, appeared from 1855 to 1881, at first 
periodical!}^, and afterwards as Barnard could obtain money or 
credit from some printer to publish them. On December 26, 1854, 
in submitting his plan of a central agency for the advancement of 
education^n the United States to the American Association for the 
Advancement of Education, then meeting at Washington, Barnard 
included in the scope of his plan the publication of a journal, " em- 
bracing accounts of sj^stems, institutions, and methods of education, 
as well as current educational thought." He followed up this sug- 
gestion by sending out a circular upon his own responsibility in 
May, 1855, stating that he proposed to publish a periodical, to — • 

embody the matured views and varied experience of wise statesmen, educators, 
and teacliers in perfecting the organization, administration, instruction, an(f 
discipline of schools of every grade, through a succession of years, under widely 
varying circumstances of government, society, and religion, and, on the other 
hand, expose real deficiencies, excite to prudent and efficient action, and serve 
as a medium of free and frequent communication between tlie friends of educa- 
tion in every portion of these great fields. 
84 



EDITOR OF THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. 85 

No. 1 of what was intended to be a quarterly publication appeared 
in August, 1855. At first, Barnard had planned to publish at 
least 10 volumes, but when that number had been reached he 
continued the Journal for 6 more, during the Civil War period. 
Four more volumes were issued while Barnard was at St. John's 
College and in Washington, and with his return to Hartford in 
1871 he resumed the publication with volume 21 and continued it 
until 30 had been reached. Then, after Barnard had put into it, as 
he said, more than $50,000 of his private fortune, he was forced to 
discontinue the publication. The subscriptions had never met the 
cost of the magazine,^ and in the endeavor to continue its publication 
his property became involved in mortgages. Tliis result, however, 
was far in the future, when Barnard issued the prospectus for the 
first number of his projected quarterly. He planned to include 
therein the "history, discussion, and statistics oT systems, institu- 
tions, and methods of education in different countries, with special 
reference to the condition and wants of our own." He had formed 
the idea in 1842, on the discontinuance of the Connecticut Conmion 
School Journal, and in 1850 had brought his plan uns-uccessfuUy 
before the American Institute of Instruction at its Northampton 
meeting. He was now out of office and had failed to secure the 
interest of the Smithsonian Institution in his plan of a central agency 
for education ; so he felt the way was clear for his own establishment 
of this magazine, of which the first number was issued in August, 
1855. At that time, the Rev. Absolam Peters, D. D., contemplated 
the publication of the American College Review, and a conference 
with him led to a combination of the two journals under a joint edi- 
torship. Barnard, however, did not work well in double harness, 
and the two editors fell out in the course of preparing the second 
number; so Barnard resumed his independent project. He prom- 
ised to issue 10 volumes of the periodical during the five years and 
would " avoid the insertion of all topics or papers foreign to the 
great subject to which it is devoted, or of a single line or word calcu- 
lated to injure intentionally the feelings of any faithful laborer in 
any allotment of the great field of American education." 

In the first number he published the proceedings of the meeting of 
the Association for the Advancement of Education at Washington 
in 1854; He did not intend to limit the field of the journal to the 
United States. Res piiblica literarwn est totius nvundi was his maxim 
and he hoped to construct a work which " would take deep hold on 
the thoughts of men." In the second number are found articles upon 
Canadian education, education in Illinois, sketches of F. A. P. 
Barnard and Denison Olmsted, and upon colleges and educational 

JJMonroe, 24, 28. 



86 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

inteJligeiice. The tliiixi number oontains sketches of H. P. Tappan 
and Tayler Lewis, as M'ell as discussions on methods of teaching 
Greek and Latin, on moral education, and on public schools in St. 
Louis. John A. Porter, of Yale, contributed a plan of an agricultural 
school, and Daniel C. Oilman an article on Scientific Schools in Eu- 
rope, to this number. Statistics from different parts of the world 
were also given. The fourth number contained articles upon debat- 
ing, physical sci-ences and mathematics, speciaf" forms of ednca- 
■Tfen(such as of idiots, of the deaf and- <k«nb, and of women), on 
the consolidation of American colleges, educational biography, and 
the Massachusetts Normal School. A supplementary number con- 
tained a sketch of Barnard himself, with an engraved portrait.^*^ 

The contents of volume 2, which was published in 1857, were fully 
as varied. Prof. Gilman contributed an article on Higher and Spe- 
cial Schools of Science and Literature in France, and James D. 
Dana another upon Scientific Schools. An address was published 
on Home and Parental Influence on public education, which had 
been read by Barnard before the American Institute of Instruction 
at Spring-field, in August. Articles dealt with the reception to 
George Peabody at Danvers, Froebel, gradation of schools, Roman 
CiHholic education in the United States, a national university, the 
gyroscope, the Dudley Observatory at Albany, drawing and art, 
Norwich University, religious instruction in schools, modern Greek, 
public libraries, reading, the common school in the United States, 
Milton's views on education, and Miss C. E. Beecher's opinions on 
physical training. 

The third volume was completed in 1858 and contained articles 
upon German reform schools for boys, Horace Mann, Roger Ascham, 
Nicholas Brown, the deaf and dumb, Swiss orphan schools, Pesta- 
lozzi, De la Salle and the Christian Brothers, Shenstone's School 
Mistress, the Kaiserwerth deaconesses, the blind, education in Sar- 
dinia, J. W. Gibbs, and on mental science by Haven. Barnard did not 
draw around him a body of contributors, but wrote, selected, or trans- 
lated most of the articles himself. Volumes 4 and 5 were published 
in 185'87 In the former we find a treatment of such subjects as college 
prayers, Pestalozzi, Lowell Mason, Jolin Sturm, art as a branch of 
popular education, Edmund Dwight, methods of teaching, Laura 
Bridgeman, Thomas Arnold, William A. Alcott, Erasmns, Melanch- 
thon, educational architecture, and Raumer's estimate of Luther. 
Volume 5 included discussions of ventilation, education in Germany, 
the Jesuits, Comenius, the Lowell lectures, Franke's orphan house, 

i« The New York Public Library contains a letter from Barnard, dated May 16, 1856, 
and written to Rev. Bamas Sears, introducing C. E. Langdon, " a professor * * * of 
indoor gymnastic exercises," and adding that " his Is the only system which I could get 
interested in and which I could pracUce by myself." 



EDITOR 0¥ THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. 87 

liousseau, Basedow, Timothy Dwight, Horace Mann, education in 
Saxony, and Yale by J. L. Kingsley. 

The year 1859 saw volumes 6 and 7 appear, two numbers being 
included hi each volume. The former volume contained contribu- 
tions upon German universities, the Phillips Academies, common 
schools in Ohio, Pestalozzi, Von Eaumer's estimates of Herder and 
Locke, Wilbur Fisk, education in Bavaria, James Hillhouse and the 
Connecticut school fund, LfOrd Broughoan, Latin, and Hill's order 
of studies. In volume 7 we find Von Raumer's views on German 
universities, and articles on McGill University, Joshua Bates and 
the Boston Public Library, Edward Everett, the history of peda- 
gogy, Pestalozzi 's assistants and classical instruction. 

Volumes 8 and 9 were published in 1860, while Barnard was in 
Wisconsin. In volume 8, he stated that he had prepared to devote 
five of the best j^ears of his life to the journal without recompense, 
but that he found that the regular subscription list would not meet 
the expense of printing and paper and he had gone "forward with 
a " formidable and increasing deficit." He would still try to com- 
plete the 10 volumes planned. In this volume we find educational 
aphorisms, Von Eaumer's views on the teaching of history, geog- 
raphy, natural science, and geometry, Josiah Holbrook and the 
lyceum, ph3^sical education, the public schools of England, educa- 
tion of the factory population, education in Germany, Belgium, Hol- 
land, and Diforway, school discipline, singing, and agriculture. 

In volume 9 are found articles upon moral education, universities, 
Tubingen, Harvard, elementary education, the catechetical method, 
architecture, normal schools, education in Scotland, Prussia, Aus- 
tria, France, and Ireland, and instruction by objects. Volume 10 
closed the first series, and in it are found articles upon the Con- 
necticut Normal School, the subjecst of education, drawing, art and 
science, Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, Yale, Mary Lyon, and 
the teaching of economics. 

The method of arranging the articles was peculiar. Barnard 
intended to use a second time the material printed in the Journal, 
so as to compose books from it, and, to save expense, he had the Jour- 
nal printed from stereotype plates. Each article was made to 
begin a new page, so that the plates could be used again without 
change. Quite a number of such volumes of reprints were published, one 
of the first of these being one upon " Eeformatory Education : Papers 
on preventive, corrective, and reformatory institutions and agencies 
in different countries," including both Evirope and the United States.^ 
From his earliest connection with the public school S3^stem in Connec- 
ticut, Barnard had been convinced of the " necessity of establishing 

» Published in 1857, p. 361. 



88 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

special institutions to meet educational deficiencies and counteract 
causes and tendencies to vice and crime among a large and increasing 
class of the population in cities and manufacturing districts." To 
attain this end, he recommended evening schools, libraries, lectures, 
and museums, reform schools, and home missions. As a result of his 
lectures and articles, aided by the efforts of many philanthropic per- 
sons, reform schools v^ere founded in Connecticut and Khode Island. 

The cyclopedic knowledge and the amazing assiduity of Barnard 
made the Journal possible and it stands as a monument to his power 
to worlv.^ It is easy to see, however, why it was not popular. Wide 
as was its scope, its character was too personal. It contained tlie 
articles which Barnard could write and, with all his breadth of 
knowledge, he could not know everything. The articles were written 
upon subjects which interested him and in such a manner that he 
might later use the articles for an ulterior purpose, as parts of a 
volume, which again was to be a part of a great encj^clopedia of edu- 
cation. We are extremely thankful that we possess the Journal as a 
work of reference, but we can easily see from the statement just made 
why it was not popular as a magazine. 

In a sketch written after Barnard's death, the Kev. A. D. Mayo 
stated that: 

Prom the yeai- 1837 to the day of his death. * * * he was always recog- . 
nized as among the foremost educators of his own country and especially con- 
spicuous, as for many years the medium by which the history and condition of 
education in Europe was transmitted to the United States.* 

This transmission came through the American Journal of Educa- 
tion, of which Mayo writes that: 

Its collection of useful information, doubly important during the period of the 
two great revivals of the people's public school, from 1830 to 1850 and from 1870 
to the close of the century ; its fertility in the details of home schooling, which, 
makes it in many cases the only reliable authority in American educational 
history, its judicial impartiality in the treatment of all sorts and types of educa- 
tional institutions, Ignoring both sectarian religious and partisan political preju- 
dices, its characteristic spirit of optimistic estimate of educational systems and 
methods in advance of the time, which in one or another shape have become in- 
corporated with the various school organizations of the country; in these and 
other ways we note the vast field in which he was most content to abide. * * * 
His wide acquaintance with the best that was going on in Euro»3e qualified him 
to publish the results there obtained, M'ith thorough understanding of the condi- 
tions under which this information could be accepted and used in the United 
States. 

Outside of the magazine we find little trace of Barnard's activity 
from 1856 to 1859. In 185T his friend David W^atkinson, of Hart- 
ford, died, making Barnard one of the original trustees under his 

^ The first edition of Educational Biography appeared in 1857, and of Object Teaching 
in 1860. 

* Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1902, I, 891. 



CHAlSrCELLOR OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 89 

will of the Watkinson Library, at that time one of the largest librar}'^ 
endowments in America, The library was organized in 1858, on 
February 1 of which year Barnard read a memoir of Watkinson 
before the Connecticut Historical Society, In 1861 Barnard was 
elected librarian of the Watkinson Library, but for some reason 
never filled the position. He was present at the meeting of the 
American Listitute of Instruction, held at Springfield, Mass., in 
August, 1856, and was called on unexpectedly for an address, in 
Avhich he laid emphasis upon the importance of regular attendance 
at school. He went so far as to propose that, if any child did not 
appear at school within the first few days of the session, he should 
forfeit the privilege of attending the school. He continued by 
" uttering a heresy " that " the entire expense of the public schools 
should '' not " rest upon the entire community," but that a portion 
of that expense should " rest upon the parent." The original free 
schools gave a liberal training, but were not without expense, and 
men were later misled by a false understanding of the Avord. Fur- 
ther in his address, he urged the foundation, under private auspices, 
of free charity industrial schools for the children in the large cities 
who can not attend the public schools or should not be permitted to 
mingle with the children there. He would also separate the neg- 
lected from the criminal children. He also advocated appropria- 
tions in aid of academic education, and the establishment of schools 
" of a scientific character, to prepare the students for higher engineer- 
ing, manufacturing, and mechanical pursuits," Libraries should be 
encouraged, but he believed that, with a small charge for the use of 
them, better results would be secured, than by making the books 
free. Appointments to public office should be made after competi- 
tive examination, as in England. Women should be taught the use of 
the needle and domestic economy, and no longer should it be true 
that children have " too little to do with the household arrangement, 
with the farm and the garden." 

Gov. George S. Boutwell objected to Barnard's proposal to place 
part of the expense of schools on parents, and Barnard in reply 
rather confused the issue, by saying that parents had the right to 
support the private schools. 

CIIANCEIJ-OR OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 

In July, 1858, Barnard was offered the positions of chancellor of 
the University of Wisconsin and agent of the normal school 
I'egents,^ with a salary of $2,500 a year. He accepted the position, 

^ Carpenter; Historical Sketch of the University of Wis., 33 ; Butterfleld, History of the 
Univ. of Wis. ; W. F. Allen and D. E. Spenser's Higher Ed. in Wis., 28 ; Circ. of Bureau 
of Ed., 1889, No. 1. 



90 LIFE OF HENKY BARN.\RD. 

but owing to severe illness did not come to Wisconsin until May, 
1859. In June, lie met the regents and he was inducted into office at 
Madison at the Fifth Commencement, on July 27. The day before 
this he welcomed the State Teachers' Association to the Capitol. He 
had come to Madison some years previously,'^ at the invitation of 
Hon. J. H. Tweedy, to prestmt the subject of popular education to the 
constitutional convention of the Territory, when it was on the point 
"of becoming a State. His scheme was practically included in the 
constitution, which was rejected by the people, but w^as later included 
jigain in the constitution of 1848. It seems to have been his own idea 
to have the university linked with the normal school. Lyman C. 
Draper, superintendent of education for the State, after Barnard had 
accepted the position, said in his report: 

As a promoter of the cause of education, the career of Dr. Barnard has no 
precedent and no parallel. We have reason to felicitate ourselves on the ac- 
quirement of such a man. It ought to form a new era in our State history, and 
it will if we are true to ourselves and true to him. We shall best favor our- 
selves and bless the State by listening confidingly to and carrying into effect 
whatever suggestions and advice such a man as Henry Barnard, witli his ripe 
experience and noble devotion to tlie good of his race, may deem it his -duty to 
offer on matters pertaining to the gre^t cause of popular education in Wis- 
consin.''' 

" He comes to us ripe in educational experience and is devoting, 
with unflagging energy, the best years of his life to the honor and 
glory of Wisconsin." Like Saul, the son of Kish, he towers above 
liis fellows. Teachers' institutes had already succeeded. The normal 
school will also " feel the genial influence of his persuasive instruc- 
tion and the molding power of his zeal, his talents, and his genius." 
He was expected to deliver educational addresses and conduct 
teachers' institutes throughout the State and to give a good deal of 
attention to the normal schools.^ He said that, in this wa}', he 
reached three-fourths of the teachers of the State.^ He secured some 
able men to conduct the institutes in the fall of 1859,^" and exer- 
cised a general supervision over them, delivering an introductory 
address upon popular education at most of them. At Beloit, for ex- 
ample, we are told that he " made a stirring and powerful appeal to 
educators and the educating public to rally to the rescue of the com- 
mon schools, the foundation and feeders of the college and the 
university. His remarks exhibited the wisdom and experience of a 

« Uep. of Commls. of Ed., 1S9G-97, p. 800. 

' Supt. Barry wrote that Barnard's coming " was the most important event in our edu- 
cational history, if not Indeed the most Important, in view of its public consequences, that 
has ever transpired in the history of the State." 

8 Letter of Prof. Walter M. Smith, of Mar. 13, 1915. 

» Monroe, 20. 

" He was present at Kenosha, Baraboo, Galesville, Milton, Beloit, Madison, Waupun, 
Elkhorn, and Appleton, and absent from the institutes held at Sheboygan, Mineral Point, 
Eau Claire, Richland Center, and River Falls. 



CHANCELLOR OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 91 

lifetime spent in the study of the various institutions of learning."" 
At these institutes 1,425 persons were present. 

In the same autumn he issued a circular appealing for funds to 
erect at Madison a building for lectures and experiments to promote 
science among the whole population. This early advocate of uni- 
A'crsity extension urged — 

universal insruction in art and science and tlaeir application to health and 
industry as cardinal objects in the educational system of the State, from the 
district school to the university, not to the exclusion of languages and mathe- 
matics, but on a footing of equality, both as a means of mental training and 
for the manifold and constant uses in life. 

He wished to see: (1) Drawing and physiology taught in every 
school; (2) the study of the local peculiarities of soil, mineral, ani- 
mals, and occupations in every town; (3) preparation in all public 
high schools, academies, and colleges aided by the State and espe- 
cially in all normal classes for a thorough scientific course in the 
university or a special polytechnic school; (4) the establishment of a 
museum of practical science; (5) local museums and annual courses 
of lectures for all the population in the principal towns.^^ 

He had consulted at Detroit before coming to Wisconsin with his 
predecessor in the chancellorship, Dr. J, H. Lathrop, as to the 
lmiversit3^ Barnard recommended to the regents that they transfer 
the preparatory department to the Madison High School, develop the 
normal department, add practical instruction in the application of 
science to individual and public health, to agriculture, architecture, 
and the other industrial pursuits, try to spend less for buildings and 
more for instruction and put up no more dormitories. He wished the 
students classified by individual studies and not by groui) of studies, 
or period of residence, and that degrees be given after a public 
examination, without regard to the place where the candidate should 
have pursued his studies. Recommendations were also made for the 
beautification of the grounds and for the building of a breakwater 
on the lake. He republished from the Journal four volumes, in 
editions of over 1,000 copies, that they might be distributed among 
the teachers.^^ His intention was to bring about a unity of all educa- 
tional forces, from the kindergarten to the university ; to make the 
university felt in the educational movement of the State, and de- 
velop the university's internal life, so as to meet the needs of the 

n Wis. Jour, of Ed., V. 

" He outlined his plaus to the board of normal school regents on Nov. 22. 1859, and 
they approved them. 

" One of the>:e volumes vras thus entitled : Papers for the teacher, republished from 
the American Journal of Kdiication, Second Series, 18<30, by Henry Barnard, agent of the 
regents of the normal schools, Madison, Wis., December, 1859, pp. 434. Object teaching 
and oral lessons on social science and common things, with various illustrations of the 
principles and practice of primaiT education, as adopted iu the model and training 
schools of Great Britain and Ireland. 



92 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

State; to bring up the high schools, so that they might reach tho 
proper standard ; to prepare students for the university, rather than 
reduce the university to a State liigh school; and to increase the 
university's resources by obtaining a fund for a polytechnic depart- 
ment from the legislature. 

Great expectations had been held of Barnard's coming to Wis- 
consin, but they were not realized.^* His health was poor and for"" 
considerable periods he could not work. Say Allen and Spencer: 

Such effort as he was able to make was put forth lu discharge of his du- 
ties as agent of the normal school board. The uplifting of the common 
schools was the object of his special labor and enthusiasm." The university 
saw little or nothing of him, and suffered greatly in consequence for lack of a 
guiding and controlling hand. 

Carpenter writes that Barnard's connection with the university 
was — • 

merely nominal. During the two years that he held the position of chancellor, 
he never gave a lecture'or heard a recitation, and met the students but once 
in chapel." The connection with normal schools of the State, which had been 
so strongly urged by the regents of the university, was at last abandoned by 
the normal board, as the continued absence o^f Dr. Barnard compelled them 
to an independent organization. 

Early in 1860 he suffered a severe attack of nervous prostration, 
and left Wisconsin in May. Supt. Pritchard wrote, in his report 
for I860," that " Dr. Barnard has given such an impetus to the cause 
of common-school education and, through " his publications, " has 
furnished such effective helps to the teachers, as will cause universal 
regret at the necessity under which he is laid of seeking the restora- 
tion " of his health by" leaving the State. He resigned his position 
that summer, but his resignation was not accepted until January 17, 
1861. He was detained "at his home" in Hartford by illness, so 
that he could not preside at the commencement in July, 1860, but 
even then the Wisconsin Journal of Education ^^ was hopeful for his 
administration, and reported that " We are glad to learn that Chan- 
cellor Barnard has signified his intention of removing his family 
ere long " to Madison, " and devoting himself to the arduous duties 
of his position. During the past year, though much absent, he has 
done not a little to elevate the university in the estimation of tho 
people of this State." More money was needed, and Barnard could 

" Hughes, p. 569. 

" lie had thought of aiding In the higher education of women and In that of the Wis- 
consin Indians. 

" It had been distinctly understood, however, when he accepted the chancellorship that 
he should not engage in the worlj of instruction. On Nov. 30, 1859, Barnard issued a 
circular describing the university. 

"Rep. of U. S. Commis.of Ed., 189f(|97, p. 802. . 

^* VI, 37. A newspaper controversy followed his resignation, summarized in Wis. J. of 
Ed., vol. 1. 308. 



CHANCELLOR OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN. 93 

not obtain it. It was always a cause of regret with Barnard that 
his health prevented him from directing the young career of the 
institution which has become a great State university, and he re- 
ceived Avith great pleasure the greetings the president and facultj' 
of the university sent him on the occasion of his eighty-sixth 
birthday : 

We, who have entered " iuto the fruits of your early work, recall your en- 
thusiastic labors in preparing the way for higher education in this State. 
Your sagacity early recognized that tlie foundations of a State university 
must be laid among the people, and you devoted yourself with contagious zeal 
to pfie upbuilding of the school of the Commonwealth. 

Surely it was not without reason that J. D. Philbrick wrote in 
1858,'" that Barnard had " accepted the whole country as the theater 
of his operations, without regard to State lines, and, by the extent, 
variety, and comprehensiveness of his efforts he has earned the title 
of the American educator." 

^ Norton, p. 127. «° 4 N. E. Mag., 445. 



Chapter VIIL 

AUTHORSHIP (1860-1866) AND PRESIDENCY OF ST. JOHN'S 
COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS, MD. (1866-67). 



Upon his retirement from his work in Wisconsin, Antaeus-like, 
Barnard returned to his old home in Hartford and devoted himself 
to the recovery of his health and to the preparation of educational 
literature, in which tasks he was engaged for six years. In 1862 
appeared the eleventh volume of the American Journal of Education, 
or vohime one of a new series of that periodical. Its contents were as 
varied as possible, ranging from abstract questions, such as A^Hiat is 
education? to biographical sketches such as those of Mark Hopkins 
and S. G. Howe. We find discussions of Plutarch, Quintilian, 
Locke, Spencer, and Guizot, of Vassar, and of Ascham, articles on 
Ireland, the Polytechnicum in Carlsruhe, and professional education 
in Prussia, reprints of Hartlib's proposal for an agricultural college 
in 1651, and of a plan for an industrial school in 1647. Volumes 12 
and 13 were published in 1863, and in them we see clearly the disjecta 
viemhra of the history of pedagogy from the earliest times, which 
Barnard always intended to write. Much of the two volumes is de- 
voted to the subject of military schools in various countries, which 
articles were republished in book form.^ Wlien "the War of Seces- 
sion " began Samuel Colt was meditating the establishment of a 
school of mechanical engineering in Hartford. He thought of en- 
grafting military training upon the school, and, after conference 
with him, Barnard began his investigations. Mr. Colt's death put 
a stop to the plan, and the only result was the publication of this 
volume at his widow's expense. Barnard did not ol^ject to a mod- 
erate amount of drill in schools, but considered this not " an ade- 
quate substitute for the severe scientific study which a well-organized 
system of military institutions provides for the training of ollicers." 
He maintained that: 

Our old and abiding reliance for industrial progress, social well-being, internal 
peace, and security from foreign aggression rests on — 

1. The better elementary education of the whole people through better homes 
and better schools — through homes, such as Christianity establishes and recog- 

1 Military schools and courses of instruction in the science and art of war, pp. 948, 
1872. 

94 



AUTHORSHIP. 95 

nizes, and schools common, because cheap enough for the poorest and good 
for the best, made better by a more intelligent public conviction of their neces- 
sity and a more general knowledge among adults of the most direct modes of 
effecting their improvement and by the joint action of more intelligent parents, 
better qualified teachers, and more faithful school officers. This first great 
point must be secured by the more vigorous prosecution of all the agencies and 
measures now employed for the advancement of public schools, and a more 
general appreciation of the enormous amount of stated ignorance and half 
education or miseducation which now prevails, even in States where the most 
attention has been paid to popular education. 

2. The establishment of a system of public high schools in every State, far 
more complete than exists at this time, based on the system of elementary 
schools into which candidates shall gain admission only after having been 
found qualified in certain studies by an open examination. The studies of 
this class of schools should be preparatory, both in literature and science, for 
what Is now the college course and for what is now also the requirement in 
mathematics in the second year's course at the Military Academy at West 
Point. 

3. A system of special schools, either in connection with existing colleges, 
or on an independent basis, in which the principles of science shall be taught 
with special reference to their applications to the arts of peace and war. Fore- 
most in this class should stand a national school of science, organized and con- 
ducted on the plan of the Polytechnic School of France and preparatory to 
spcK'ial military and naval schools. 

4. The appointment in all deimrtments of public service by open competitive 
examination. ' 

In writing the report of the visitors to the Military Academy at 
West Point in 1863, Barnard advocated appointment by competitive 
examination. He also served as a visitor to the Naval Academj'^ at 
Annapolis in 1864:. At the meeting in Concord, N. H., of the Ameri- 
can Institute of Instruction in August, 1863, ao which he was chosen 
a vice president, he introduced a resolution that Congress be peti- 
tioned to — 

revise the terms and mode of admission to the national military and naval 
schools so that candidates should compete, in open trial, before intelligent and 
Impartial examiners in each State * * *, and that in all cases the order 
of admission shall be according to the personal merits and fitness of the can- 
didate. * 

Barnard stated that of 54 young men recently sent to West Point 
by Members of Congress not more than 10 could enter any high 
school. He secured a unanimous vote for the passage of the resolu- 
tions, although the fear was expressed by one Member that "Mem- 
bers of Congress, elected on political principles, would" not "give 
up any privilege or perquisite till they were compelled to." On 
August 12, 1864, at Ogdensburg, N. Y., he addressed the National 
Teachers' Association along the same line on "Competitive examina- 
tions applied to appointments in the public service." In addition 
to the articles on military and nav&il schools, volume 12 contained 



96 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAKD. 

accounts of benefactors of American education, discussions on moral 
education and gymnastics, descriptions of the Boston Latin School 
and of education in Modern Greece, discussions of the teaching of 
Greek and Latin, and of the old ABC books. In volume 13 we 
find articles, as usual, upon most diverse subjects: Plays and holi- 
daj's, "What is education? American textbooks, Goldsmith and Sam- 
uel Johnson, Herbert Spencer, Fenelon, Wayland, architecture, 
female education, education in Ireland, normal schools in France 
and Switzerland. 

The fourteenth A'olume was published in 1864, and contained arti- 
cles on education in Holland, Russia, Canada, Great Britain, and 
Denmark; on Aristotle, Rabelais, Milton, Lycurgiis, Locke, and 
Horace Mann; on the English language, the teacher as artist, the 
National Teachers' Association, physical exercise, architecture, and 
textbooks. 

Volume 15 appeared in 1865, and contained articles on studies 
and on conduct, architecture, teachers' associations, normal schools, 
physical culture, endowed grammar schools in England, and educa- 
tion in Connecticut and in Germany. 

In volume 16 was published in 1866 an article by Barnard on 
Educational Associations, written for the National Teachers' Associ- 
ation in August, 1864, but not read then by him on account of illness. 
The volume also contains articles on St. Paul's School, London; on 
New England Academies ; on Southey's opinions as to teachers from 
The Doctor ; on William of Wykeham and V/inchester ; on Sarmiento 
and his educational work for South America; on school apparatus; 
on education in California, Italy, and Sweden; on St. John's Col- 
lege, of which Barnard was assuming the presidency; on normal 
schools; and on the nature and value of education. Volume 17 
appeared in 1867, and contained reprints of Hoole's works (written 
about 1650), on the grammar school, master's method, and scholastic 
discipline. Other articles treated of Cowley, the Westfield Normal 
School, American ethnology, education in Prussia and Switzerland, 
Mrs. A. L, Phelps, Egerton Ryerson in Canada, schools as they 
were in the United States, and the opinions of Fairchild of Oberlin 
on coeducation of men and women, of Dupanloup on female educa- 
tion, and of Von Sybel on German universities. 

From time to time Barnard would assemble the plates of articles 
upon some subject from the volumes of the Journal and publish 
them as a book. Thus, in 1860. appeared from volumes 3 and 7 of the 
Journal, a volume entitled Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism, contain- 
ing Von Raumer's life of the educator and a translation of many of 
his Avritings, as Avell as articles on Rousseau, with extracts 
from Emile and chapters on the influence of Pestalozzi in England, 



AUTHORSHIP. 97 

France, and America.- When Von Eaumer receiA^ed a copy of this 
book, he wrote from Erlangen to Barnard ^ that : 

You have collected with the greatest diligence all that relates to PestalozzI 
and his school. , I can hardly understand how you could have made such a col- 
lection, in America or out of it either, even by the aid of well-informed corre- 
spondents. * * * It is the most comprehensive, reliable, and satisfactory 
work I have on the great Swiss educator, 

A little before the book on Pestalozzi there had appeared a volume 
entitled " American Educational Biography, memoirs of teachers, 
educators, and promoters, and benefactors of education, science, and 
literature." - This volume was intended as the first of a series "con- 
taining sketches of the lives of those who, in different ages and 
countries and under widely varying circumstances of religion and 
government, have labored faithfully and successfully in different 
allotments of the great field of human cultm-e." Only one other 
volume of the proposed series ever appeared,^ " German Educational 
Eeformers, Memoirs of Eminent Teachers and Educators, with con- 
tributions to the History of Education in Germany,"*^ much of the 
book being translated from the works of Karl von Eaumer. 

Another series projected and partly carried out, in the form of 
reprints from the American Journal of Education, comprised three 
volumes: "American Pedagogy: Education, the School, and the 
Teacher in American Literature " ^ contained William Eussell's " In- 
tellectual and Moral Education," HilPs "True Order of Study," 
Wayland's " Mind," and articles upon National and State Aid to 
Education, Professional or Normal Aims and Methods in Teaching, 
Mark Hopkins, Fairchild, of Oberlin, Cyrus Pierce, J. S. Hart, and 
D. P. Page. " English Pedagogy," ^ contained a wonderful oUa 
podrlda : Eeprints of Ascham's " Schoolmaster," Bacon's Essays on 
Custom, Education, and Studies, Wootton's Apothegms, Milton's 
Tractate on Education, Hartlib on an Agricultural College, Locke's 
Thoughts on Education, Herbert Spencer on Education, Petty on a 
Trade School, Fuller's Good Schoolmaster, Goldsmith's Deserted 
Village, Shenstone's Village Schoolmaster, Cowper's Tirocinium, 
Crabbe's School of the Borough, Hood's Irish Teacher, etc. " Ger- 

* A second edition, entitled " Pestalozzi and his educational system," was later pub- 
lished by C. W. Bardeen, pp. 751. This volume contains as a frontispiece a portrait of 
Barnard in middle life and, at page 16, one of him in old age. Bardeen stated that " no 
man did more to make the work of Pestalozzi known in America than Dr. Barnard." 

" Second ed., p. 128. Barnard worked on this book until ISSl. 
■ * With 26 steel portraits. 1859, pp. 526. Second edition republished by Bardeen, with 
portrait of Barnard in middle life as frontispiece. 

^ Most of the sketches in the American volume were written by Barnard. 

" Published in 1863. Reprint from Am. J. Ed., revised ed., 1878, under title " German 
Teachers and Educators," pp. 694. 

"' Second edition, 1876, pp. 510. 

8 Second edition, 1876, pp. 482. A second series appeared in 1873, pp. G28. 

107018°— 19 7 



98 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

man Pedagogy " * was the third volume and contained chiefly trans- 
lations from Von Raumer, Wiininer, and Diesterweg. 

Another projected series, of which only the first volume was pub- 
lished, Avas to be entitled " Educational Aphorisms and Suggestions 
Ancient and Modern." ^° The portion published was largely a 
translation of J. F. T. Wohlfarth's " Pedagogical Treasure Basket," 
and in its pages many interesting quotations are to be found. 

The voluminousness of Barnard's literary production was remark- 
able, for several single volumes are yet to be added to the list of those 
].'iiblished during these years. "True Student Life, Letters, Essays, 
u'ld thoughts on studies and conduct, addressed to young persons by 
men eminent in literature and affairs " ^^ was one of these. The 
preface to the second edition, dated 1872, thus describes the work : 

Although these ch.-ipters do not cover the whole field of youthful culture or 
all the aids, motives, and dangers of a scholarly and public career and include 
a few sheaves only from the golden harvest of recent American didactic and 
pedai^ogical literature, they constitute a convenient and valuable manual of 
student life. The light which they shed, like that which Virtue cast on the 
diverging paths of Hercules, neither leads to bewilder or dazzles to blind, and 
the advice which they drop is kindred to that which Wisdom of old uttereth 
in the street, apples of gold, the words of the wise. 

The book is divided into four parts. The first contains aphorisms, 
answering the question what is education, Masson's " College Educa- 
tion and Self-Education," and John Lalor's " Nature and Value of 
Education," In the second part are found extracts upon books and 
reading, travel, manners, money — its acquisition and management — 
the conduct of life, methods of study, etc. The third section treats 
of the education and employment of women, with extracts from St. 
Jerome, Von Raumer, Thomas More, Mrs. Jameson, and Dupanloup. 
English pedagogy of the nineteenth century is the theme of the la.-t 
section. 

A more important work is " Kindergarten and Child Culture Pa- 
pers: Papers on Froebel's Kindergarten, with suggestions on the 
principles and methods of child culture in different countries." ^^ In 
the preface of a late edition of this pioneer work, dated 1879, Bar- 
nard wrote : 

» Second edition, 1876. The first edition was an enlargement of one of tlie papers for 
teachers published while Barnard was in Wisconsin. 

10 Part 1, 1861, pp. 202. 

'1 Second edition, 1873, pp. 552. Reprint, of course, from Am. J. Ed. Second edition 
ends with pages (pp. 416 and ft) from recent English publications on the relative value of 
classical and scientific studies in a liberal education, which pages belonged properly to 
the second series of papers on English pedagogy. 

1^ This work, began as an article in the Am. J. Ed. for September, 1856, was then pub- 
lished as a pamphlet, said to be the first sepnrate one on the subject in the United States, 
was enlarged in 1858, 1861, and 1S67, and was largely embodied in "German Pedagogy." 
In its last edition of 1884 it contains pp. 800, of course all reprinted from Am. J. Ed. 
platea. 



AUTHORSHIP. 99 

A variety of genius must be at worli to obtain the teachers of each grade 
(and the kindergartners with the rest) for their special duties and to instruct 
and interest parents in the work of the schoolroom and to give them, as such, 
a direct right of inspection and suggestion as to tlie schools where their chil- 
dren are in attendance. I believe that parents, as such, have more rights and 
rights wliich should be respected by their own direct representatives in all 
educational boards than are now conceded to them in State and municipal 
school organizations. 

All schools not under progressive teachers and not subjected to frequent, 
intelligent, and independent supervision are sure to fall into dull mechanical 
routine ; and the kindergarten, of all other educational agencies, requires a 
tender, thoughtful, practical woman, more than a vivacious and even regularly 
educated girl. The power of influencing and interesting mothers in their home 
work and securing their willing cooperation is an essential qualification of 
the kindergartner. The selection of such can not be safely left to school ofli- 
cers as now appointed and who too often do not look beyond their neighbor's 
nephews and nieces for candidates. Until the principles of eai'ly child culture 
are better understood and school officers and teachers are more thoroughly 
trained in the best methods, the first establishment of kindergartens had better 
be left to those who are already sufficiently interested to make some sacrifice 
of time or means in their behalf, and when found in successful operation and 
conforming to certain requirements they should be entitled to aid from public 
funds in proportion to attendance, and for such aid be subject to official 
Inspection. 

The book is a very composite character and is divided into five 
parts. The first 130 pages are chiefly occupied by extracts from 
Froebel's writings. A discussion of his educational system follows 
to page 368. From that point to page 450 we find reprints of early 
elementary books, such as the New England Primer and the Petty 
Schoole, by C. H., printed in 1659. The next 300 pages are devoted 
to a description of kindergarten work in different countries, and the 
concluding portion of the volume is occupied by plans of kinder- 
garten buildings, description of the gifts, etc. 

In March, 1860, Barnard was appointed as census clerk to prepare 
statistics of education. By the beginning of 1863 he had received 
$3,500 and had made no report. J. C. G. Kennedy, superintendent of 
tlie census, then wrote asking that the report be made soon. On May 
11 Barnard replied that President Woolsey, of Yale, and many other 
educators were interested in the matter and that he had devoted his 
time to the " preliminary work of gathering and f)reparing materials 
for the history of education " and asked for more time. I have no 
more information as to the work. 

In 1861 he made a vain application to Lincoln to be sent abroad 
in the Diplomatic Service, preferably to Switzerland, and in 1862 
he withdrew from a candidacy for a regentship in the Smithsonian 
Institution, as he was opposed by Henry, ^in opposition Barnard 
believed occasioned by his desire to have education included within 
the purview of that institution. During the Civil War Barnard 



100 LIFE OF HEISTRY BARXARD. 

also found time to deliver a course of lectures, in October, 1863, 
before the Lowell Institute in Boston on " Books and Education in 
the United States." 

PRESIDENT OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS. 

At the close of the Civil War the board of visitors of St. John's 
College, Annapolis, Md., determined to reopen its doors, which had 
been closed to students while the buildings had been used for hos- 
pitals during several years. In some way their attention was drawn 
to the fact that Barnard was unoccupied except for his literary 
labors and they offered to him the presidency of the college. I have 
always suspected that the Rev. Libertus van Bokkelen, then State 
superintendent, was responsible for this selection, but have no evi- 
dence of it. Through the influence of the late Joseph M. Cushing, a 
delegate from Baltimore City to the State constitutional convention 
of ISGi, an educational article had been placed in the constitution 
which was then drafted. Dr. van Bokkelen had begun the estab- 
lishment of a State school system with great energy and had the 
idea of capping the educational pyramid by a State university.^-* 
Is it not likely that he may have fired Barnard's imagination by the 
dream of becoming the president of such a university and so direct- 
ing the educational interests of the whole State? 

On November 11, 1865, Barnard, in response to a letter requesting 
him to suggest some one for the presidency of St. John's named 
Prof. Chauvenet, and stated that he thought that a " State college 
should be in organic connection as well as in instructional sequence 
* * * with the other parts of the State system of public instruc- 
tion." On December 1, less than a month later, Hon. Alexander 
Randall, on behalf of the visitors, asked Barnard to accept the presi- 
dency with a salary of $3,000 and to visit him before making a 
decision as to the proposal. The election had been made on No- 

"» Steiner's Education in Md., p. 143. Barnard's interest In Maryland matters first 
appears in a letter found in the correspondence of the Hon. Augustus W. Bradford, among 
the State Executive Papers, which letter reads as follows : 

Hartford, Conn., 

Nov. 5th, '63. 
His Ex. Gov. Bradford, 

AnnapoUSj Md. 
Sir : At the request of my friend and classmate, Rev. Mr. Jas. R. Davenport, I shall 
nmil to you several documents relating to the school system of Connecticut. 

The one personal to myself is sent not for anything personal but simply because it 
shows the diflSculties which those of us who labored in this field a quarter of a century 
ago had to contend with, and which you should try to obviate in advance in whatever you 
attempt in Maryland. 

I was consulted a few weeks ago about a bill for an act relating to public schools in 
West Virginia. The act If adopted as reported by the committee is very good, if wisely 
administered. 

I shall be very glad to hear that Maryland has adopted a liberal system of public 
education. 

Very respectfully, your obt., 

Hbnri" Barnard. 



PRESIDENT OF ST. JOHN's COLLEGE, ANNAPOLIS. 101 

vember 30, at a largely attencled meeting of the board of visitors, 
at which Gov. Swann and all the judges had been present, and 16 
out of 19 votes cast had been in Barnard's favor, as Thomas Karney 
wrote him. Barnard thought of the establishment of a scientific 
school in Baltimore and a pedagogical school in Annapolis, both in 
organic connection with St. John's, and took the matter under care- 
ful consideration. We have no record of the considerations which 
influenced him, but at any rate Barnard accepted the position and 
was inaugurated on January 7, 1866, in the hall of the house of 
delegates in the Statehouse. Gov. Swann, Lieut. Gov. C. C. Cox, 
Eev. Dr. van Bokkelen, and Hon. William H. Tuck spoke. 

Barnard, in his inaugural, referred to the college's famous old 
poplar tree, to the need of a high school in Annapolis^ and of more 
equipment for the college, while he felt that there was the possibility 
of establishing there within three years an undenominational col- 
lege which should be unsurpassed south of Princeton. Emphasis 
should be placed on pedagogical methods. Every one must instruct 
at some time, therefore every one should learn methods of instruc- 
tion. He prepared an eleborate report, dated June 28, 1866, upon 
the reorganization of the college.^^ In view of the meager financial 
resources of the institution, the extent of the plans seems almost 
grotesque. He hoped to build a gymnasium and a boat and bath 
house, new laboratories, and an additional dormitory and buy new 
books for the insufficiently stocked librar3^ He wished to emphasize 
the teaching of English and of modern languages and thought that 
efforts should be made to induce more business men to go to college. 
The curriculum should be divided into 11 departments: (1) Prin- 
ciples of education and religion, with their " applications to methods 
of study, formation of character, and conduct of life," including 
ethics, metaphysics, and logic. (He wished to have the State 
teachers' association meet with the college and to " open to public 
school teachers of the State any of our courses of instruction, con- 
nected with their own instruction, free of tuition, and to arrange the 
time for the lectures in the history, principles, and methods of edu- 
cation, so as to facilitate their attendance." )^* (2) Phj^sical culture, 
the students being placed also in a military organization. (3) En- 
glish. (4) Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy, each subject to be 
taught by a separate professor, as soon as possible. (5) Chemistry 
and Chemical Technology. (6) Natural Science, comprising botany, 
mineralogy, geology, and zoology, to be later extended to cover agri- 
culture, mining, and arts. (7) Geogi'aphy, history, and national in- 
dustries. (8) Law and public economy. (9) Graphics, drawing, 
penmanship, and bookkeeping. (10) Fine arts, including m.usic, 
vocal culture, modeling, and sketching. (The history and princi- 

" 16 Am. J. Ed., 539. " Monroe, p. 21. 



102 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

pies of sculpture, painting, architecture, and landscape gardening 
should be studied by those who seek the highest honors.) (11) Lan- 
guages, ancient and modern. To begin work Barnard wished to em- 
ploy at least five professors and to use nonresident lecturers. He 
wished a preparatory department and thought that a college is " an 
extension and perfection of the discipline and attainment of the 
academy or the high school." His plan discussed terms, tuition, 
scholarships, and a permanent endowment, as well as the organiza- 
tion of an alumni society. 

On August 13, 1866, a circular was issued, signed by Gov. Swann, 
as president ex officio of the board of visitors. From it we learn that 
the faculty was composed of Dr. Barnard as principal and professor 
of mental, moral, and social science, including the princij^les and 

methods of education; Rev. G. W. McPhail, D. D., ; 

George W. Atherton, Latin; E. P. Scammon, mathematics; Hiram 
Corson, English; Julius W. Dashiell, Greek; Wm. Steffen, German; 
D. N, Camp, principal of the preparatory and normal department; 
Z. Richards, principal of the commercial department; Rev. W. L. 
Gage, physical geography; S. S. Halderman, chemistry and natural 
philosophy ; and Wm. H. Hopkins, tutor in mathematics and Greek. 

In September, work was begun ^^ with a preparatoiy department 
and a freshman class. Barnard traveled somewhat over the State in 
the interest of the college but was soon disillusioned of his hope to 
establish a strong institution. His endeavors to secure contributions 
for scholarships and for the library were without much result. The 
legislature had a democratic majority, unfriendly to the Republican 
board of visitors which had called Barnard. There was danger tliat 
the legislative grant to the St. John's would be withdrawn. The 
house of delegates, on February 7, 1867, asked for information as to 
the management of the college, and on March 4 J. T. Mason, the 
secretary of the board of visitors, answered that Barnard had vis- 
ited many parts of the State, hoped to add by gift 2,500 volumes 
to the college library and was sanguine of success, if encouraged by 
the State. Just while matters were in so discouraging a condition, 
Barnard was appointed United States Commissioner of Education 
and resigned the presidency of St. John's.^'' The only survivor of 
the faculty of the college at the time of Barnard's presidency is Prof. 
William H. Hopkins, of Goucher College, who, under date of March 
6, 1915, gave the following reminiscences of this administration: 

These were all strangers to us — nortliei'ners — I being the only Marylander 
Invited to resume the work I had been compelled to drop by the war, which had 
forced the college to close its doors. • * * It was the reorganization of an 

« Steiner, Ed. in Md., p. 113. 

" While in Maryland he had a conversation with .Tohns Hopkins. His experience made 
Lim feel tliat Uie " provincial colleges must be subject to Baltimore." 



PKESIDENT OF ST. JOHn's COLLEGE^ ANNAPOLIS. 103 

old southern college in a new political atmosphere. " Rebellion" had just been 
crushed, and for the time being at least, " loyal," that is to say " Republican," 
elements were venturing to assert themselves in an environment normally 
democratic. They had asserted themselves even in the board of visitors find 
governors of St. John's, temporarily, and so, some of the most influential mem- 
bers of that body, men of the highest character, such as Hon. Alexander Rau- 
dull, ex-Gov. Prntt, Frank H. Stockett, Dr. John Ridout, and others presumably 
used their influence to secure the appointment of Dr. Barnard as president. 
Just how they fixed on him I do not know. Good work was done during that 
one year by the men whom the new president called to his aid, but the pro- 
fessor himself never met the students in the role of instructor. He made, as 
I now recall it, a few public addresses, sometimes apologizing for very evident 
signs of hasty preparation, and finding fault with the lack of enthusiastic 
cooperation on the part of the citizens of our "grand (but rather slow) old 
Commonwealth." If I may give you my honest impression (of coHrse I may 
be wrong), I always felt that Dr. B's heart was not wholly in the work of 
rehabilitating St. John's, or, if it was, that he was clearsighted enough to 
" discern the signs of the times " as unfavorable to his further endeavors in 
that direction. 

Well, the new regime was short-lived. Dr. Barnard received the appoint- 
ment as Commi.ssioner of Education and bade us a prompt and cheerful adieu, 
amid the usual resolutions, and with him went also his two lieutenants, Messrs. 
Atherton and Camp, and shortly afterwards Prof. Steften also departed. In 
fact, the very next year (1867) saw Dr. James C. Welling, president, and Profs. 
Nelson, Dashiell, Corson, and others inaugurating a new dynasty and a new 
peri(»d in the life of the old college. 

Dr. Henry Barnard was president of St. John's College for only one year 
(1SG6-67). During that short time I was so busy with my own work and Dr. 
Barnard so engrossed, not only with his new duties as president but nmch more 
so (as it always .seemed to me) with outside matters, his Journal of Education 
in particular, that it can scarcely be said that I came to know him at all. 
Indeed, his presidency' of St. John's I always regarded as substantially with- 
out influence on its history. It was but a brief episode in his own busy life, 
and, I fancy, a convenient stepping-stone to the higher national position on 
which his eye, it is likely, was already fixed. It is true that he called to the 
various chairs of instruction some able men. His chief officer, who relieved 
him absolutely of all executive details, was George W. Atherton, afterwards 
president of Pemisylvania State College (who died a few years ago in that 
oftice). 

Prof. Atherton also took charge of the higlier Latin and Greek. His superin- 
tendent of the preparatory department was David N. Camp, a splendid teacher, 
the author of Camp's Geographies. Then there was William StelYen, an ex- 
captain of the Prussian Army, who taught mathematics and German and 
military tactics and athletics, besides acting temporarily as professor of 
physical science, an able, progressive, but touchy Teuton. Dr. Barnard also 
engaged the services of two nonresident " occasional " lecturers, S. S. Halde- 
man and Rev. William L. Gage, prominent and able men, whose visits, however- 
were too few and far between to count as a weighty factor iu the college 
scheme. 



Chapter IX. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 
(1867-1870). 



When the Eev. Samuel Knox, of Fredericktown, McL, that for- 
gotten educational dreamer to whom Jefferson owed so much, went 
to Washington in March, 1826, to talk with public men concerning 
his " improved plan of public education " ^ he was met with the uni- 
versal opinion of Members of Congress that " public education was 
a subject Congress could not take up; it was unconstitutional and 
reserved as an inherent right in each particular State." A series 
of similar defeats met Barnard during his efforts for nearl}' 30 
3'ears. 

In 1838 he visited Washington to ascertain what school statistics 
existed there, and finding that nothing had been done to collect them, 
after interviews with Mr. Forsj^th, Secretary of State, and Mr. 
Hunter, the chief clerk of that department which had the charge of 
the census, he brought to the attention of President Van Buren^ 
the desirability of including educational statistics in the census of 
1810. These statistics were secured and constituted the earliest 
recognition of education by the Federal Government. Barnard and 
JNIann used these statistics in 1812 to show the magnitude of the 
educational interest and the " utter inadequacy of existing means of 
popular education to meet the exigencies of a republican govern- 
ment." When traveling in that and the succeeding year, Barnard 
had urged in his addresses the importance of collecting and dissemi- 
nating reliable information as to schools and of establishing in each 
State and for the whole country a " central repository or office sup- 
plied with plans of schoolhouses, apparatus and furniture, and a 
circulating library of books and pamphlets on education and a 
specimen of a school library." 

In 1845 and 1847 he tried to have the " diffusion of a knowledge of 
the science and art of education and the organization and adminis- 
tration of systems of public schools " put into the scheme for the 

1 Steiner's Life of Knox, In Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1898-09, p. 599. 
" 30 Am. J. Ed., 193 ; Rep. of Commis. of Ed., 1902, I, 893. 

104 



UNITED STATES COMMISSIONEE OF EDUCATION. 105 

Smithsonian Institution. He proposed in 1849, when a member of a 
committee to present topics to a convention of friends of popular 
education, that there be established at Washington a " permanent 
statistical bureau charged with the decennial census, which should 
present an annual report on the educational statistics and progress of 
the country." A year later he proposed to secure the same object for 
New England through the American Institute of Instruction. In 
December, 1854, he submitted to the Association for the Advancement 
of Education a " plan of a central agency for the advancement of 
education in the United States by the Smithsonian Institution or a 
bureau in a Government department." Bishop Alonzo Potter and 
Barnard were appointed as a committee to confer with President 
Pierce thereupon. In 1856 the Association for the Advancement of 
Education met in Detroit, and Barnard in his presidential address 
dwelt upon: (1) The magnitude of the educational interests of the 
country as shown by the census of 1850; (2) the service which the 
National Government could render by publishing an annual report 
from a competent officer, who should be put in immediate communi- 
cation wuth State and municipal sj'stems and thus should deal with 
education as another officer dealt with agriculture; (3) the pro- 
posed appropriation of the income from public lands to the States 
for education and the support of public-school teachers; (4) the 
insertion of a provision in each State constitution making it obliga- 
tory for the legislature to establish, aid, and supervise schools and 
protect society by compulsion from the neglect of parental duty; 
(5) the application of an educational test to all candidates for Gov- 
ernment service. In this last point Barnard showed himself an early 
advocate of civil-service reform. Every year thereafter until 1861 
Barnard visited Washington to secure some advance in these direc- 
tions.^ 

The Civil War, with the withdraAval of the State's rights southern- 
ers and with the great increase in the centripedal forces and in the 
powers of the National Government, led to a revival of the plan to 
have the United States take some part in education. On August 18, 
1864, A. J. Eickoff delivered an address at Harrisburg, Pa., before 
the National Teachers' Association advocating a National Bureau 
of Education to obtain and communicate information, and saying 
tr at : * 

The Government must recognize tlie cause of general education as a part of 
its care, not by direct encouragement alone but, so far as may be, by influences 
of every kind which can induce a people to regard the matters that concern it 
as of the highest interest. A Department of Education must be established 
alongside of the Department of Agriculture. 

* He secured some votes in Congress for the agricultural land-grant bill. 

* 16 Am. J. Ed., 290. 



106 LIFE OF HENRY BAENARD. 

At the same timo ^ S. H, White spoke in favor of a " National 
Bureau of Educational Statistics," since " this Nation, founded upon 
the mental culture of the people and dependent for its prosperity 
upon their intcllioent action, can most completely secure its success 
b}' giving to educational agencies the power and influence of national 
adoption." A year and a half later, on February 7, 1866, E. E. 
White, commissioner of the common scliools of Ohio, read a paper on 
a National Bureau of Education before the meeting at Washington 
of the National Association of School Superintendents.® He main- 
tained that " universal education, next to universal liberty, is a matter 
of deep national concern," and that " education must be coextensive 
with society." The United States might, by " conditional appropria- 
tions and by a system of general inspection and encouragement, 
through the agency of a National Bureau of Education, induce each 
State to maintain an efficient school system." A demand existed for 
a " national channel of communication between the school systems of 
the different States." 

As a result of this address, a memorial was presented to Congress 
by the association.'^ Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota, also intro- 
duced a resolution into the House of Representatives, instructing the 
joint committee on reconstruction to inquire into the expedienc}' of 
establishing a National Bureau of Education, " to enforce education 
without regard to color." The preamble to the resolution, which 
passed the House by a large majority, stated that such a bureau was 
necessary, because " republican interests can find permanent safety 
only upon the basis of the universal mtelligence of the people," and 
because " the great disasters which have afflicted the Nation and 
desolated one-half its territory are traceable, in a great degree, to 
the absence of common schools and general education among the 
people of the lately rebellious States." A bill was next introduced, 
on P'ebruary 14, by James A. Garfield, and was referred to a select 
committee of which Garfield was chairman. The original bill pro- 
vided for a bureau in the Department of the Interior, but when a 
report was made on June 5, 1866, the bill had been amended so as 
to establish the Department of Education. Supported by Donnelly, 
Garfield, Moulton of Illinois, Banks, and Boutwell, and opposed by 
Pike of Maine, Rogers of New Jersey, and Randall of Pennsylvania, 
the bill passed the House on June 19. Garfield's speech,^ delivered 
more vitally affects the future of this Nation" than the one under 
consideration. According to the census of 1860, there were 1,200,000 
on June 8, was an elaborate and polished address, replete with infor- 
mation. He knew of no measure " that has a nobler object or that 
free white illiterate adults in the United States, of whom two-thirds 



' 15 Am. J. Ed., 180. 'Barnes, History of 39tli Congress, p. 553. 

• 16 Am. J. Ed., 177. • 17 Am. J. Ed., 40. 



UNITED STATES COMMISSIOIS^ER OE EDUCATION. 107 

■were American born. The Library of Conore.ss had no educational 
reports from 19 States. These facts ho\yed tlie need. The object 
was no more unconstitutional than others to which Congress had 
appropriated money; such as the coast survey, the astronomical ob- 
servatory, the lighthouse board, the exploring expeditions, the sur- 
vey of a route for a Pacific railwa5% the Patent Office, or the Agri- 
cidtural Department. He referred to the advocacy Thaddeus Stevens 
had given to Pennsylvania schools and praised the interest taken in 
education by Ohio. Then he quoted the leaders of education in other 
countries, referred to the work done by them, and closed with an 
" appeal to those who care more for the future safety and glory of 
this Nation than for any mere temporary advantage, to aid in giving 
to education the public recognition and active support of the Federal 
Government." ® 

On February 26, 1867, the bill was reported favorably in the Sen- 
ate, and the discussion upon it was opened by Lyman Trumbull with 
a speech favoring it. Dixon, of Connecticut, Sumner, Howe, Nor- 
ton, and Yates spoke in favor of it, while Davis opposed it altogether, 
and Conness and Howard opposed the use of the word department 
(which had been chosen in order that the commissioner might select 
his own clerks) on the ground that the head of a department should 
be in the President's cabinet, and that bureau would be the better 
word here. The bill was passed by the Senate without a division on 
February 28, and on March 1 a motion to reconsider the matter 
failed by a vote of 7 to 28, 17 Members being absent and no party 
lines being drawn in the vote. The bill was signed by President 
Johnson on March 2, and the name of Henry Barnard was sent to 
the Senate as that of the first commissioner on March 11. The bill ^^ 
provided for a commissioner with a salary of $4,000, a chief clerk, 
and two other clerks, all three appointed by the commissioner. An- 
nual reports were to be made, and the subject of land grants for edu- 
cation should be treated in the first report. The commissioner of 
public buildings was directed to find rooms for the department. The 
purpose of the department was the collection of statistics and facts 
to show the condition and progr&ss of education in the States and 
Territories, and the difi'usion of information concerning the organi- 
zation and management of schools and school sj^stems and methods 
of teaching, so as to aid the people of the United States in the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise 
in the promotion of the cause of education throughout the country. 
In Maj'o's Avords : ^^ 

There was one man in the United States who was peculiarly adapted to this 
grand work of public inspiration in a decisive and inviting way. That man 

»Text of the bill Is given in 17 Am. J. Ed., 63. Vide also 30 Am. J. Ed., 19S et seq. 
wLaws of 89th Congress, Ch. CLVIII (H. R., 276). 
■^ Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1902.. I. 899. 



108 LIFE OF HENRY BAENARD. 

* * * Avas the educator wlio, in a career of 30 years, had achieved a national 
and international reputation by tlie habit of fashioning everything connected 
with education into a grand and attractive shape. 

To further education in these ways of collecting and diffusing 
information had been Barnard's work. He had been consulted by 
those having charge of the memorial which was presented to Con- 
gress,^^ and, at his request and through personal friendship with 
him, Senator Dixon, of Connecticut, explained to Senators the prob- 
ability of Barnard's appointment so as to secure favorable consid- 
ation of the bill from those who did not favor giving President 
Johnson an appointive power. Dixon also prevented Johnson from 
vetoing ^^ the bill by explaining to him that the " true and obvious 
intent of the bill was not to centralize the administration of schools," 
but " to pei'form the Avork every j'ear which the census undertakes to 
do every 10 years."^* In the month in Avhich he was appointed Bar- 
nard issued volume 17 of the American Journal of Education, with a 
preface, dated at Annapolis, in Avhich preface he wrote of his recent 
appointment : 

A realization, in a most unexpected way, of liis own plan of a central agency 
for the advancement of education in the United States, first projected in rude 
outline in a statement submitted to the Secretary of State and the President at 
Washington in 1838, and again in 1839 in connection with the census of 1840 
(by which for the first time any official statistics of children and school attend- 
ance for the entire country was obtained), and more fully developed in his 
communication to the American Association for the Advancement of Education 
and to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1854. 

In the reports to be issued by the department he hoped to give in- 
formation more adequately than had been done in the magazine, 
which latter would not only contain those reports in future, but also 
" other discussions " of educational topics. He hoped that some 
individual or association would take up the magazine while he en- 
gaged in the national work, relying on the material already col- 
lected by him. 

The organization of a new department to advance an interest so delicate 
and extensive, and so important as the education of the people, without au- 
thority to originate or administer any system, institution, or agency by which 
the education of a single person is secured and with means and clerical force 
so utterly inadequate to even inaugurate an efficient system of inquiry and 
dissemination, will engross all the energy and time of the commissioner. 

Three months later, from Washington, he w^rote on June 8, that : 

Constant pressure of engagements connected with his withdrawal from the 
presidency of St. John's and with the organization of the Department of Edu- 

^ 30 Am. J. Ed., 197. 

isGaifleld had telegraphed Annapolis to Barnard: "Come over and attend to bill. It 
Is going to be vetoed." (Vide Lectures of 54th Meeting of Institute of Instruciion, p. 
115.) Barnard came to Washington and asked Dixon to intercede with Johnson for 
the bill. 

"N. B. A. Proc, 1901, p. 412. 



UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 109 

cation had prevented the issne of the numbers of the Journal for March or 
June, but that he had now secured Prof. D. N. Camp, as publisher and pro- 
prietor of the Journal, while Barnard would generally direct its policy. The 
monthly circulars of the Department of Education would be sent each sub- 
scriber to the Journal." 

Before the close of the j^ear Camp withdrew and Barnard an- 
nounced that the magazine would be contiijued by embodying therein 
the official documents of the Commissioner of Education.^*' 

During the first year of Barnard's incumbency of his office Prof. 
William C. Fowler, of Amherst, wrote him in December on the 
clergy and popular education,^" and addressed him as " a distin- 
guished friend and advocate of popular education who has labored 
long and successfullj' in Connecticut and elsewhere, first as a pioneer 
and then as a victorious soldier in this good cause" of education. 

Upon his appointment, Barnard at once addressed a circular to 
the governors of the various States, asking for information as to 
land grants for educational purposes,^^ and, in his first circular of 
information, made a report on the educational land policy of the 
United States. That circular also contained articles on the recog- 
nition of education as a national institution, on George Washington 
and the National University, education in Germany, constitutional 
provisions concerning schools and education, and Hoole's Petty 
School. Twelve such circulars ^^ were issued in the next year, treat- 
ing also of the professional training of teachers, school architecture, 
coeducation, taxation for public schools, agricultural colleges, Xew 
England academies, etc. When the American Institute of Instruc- 
tion met at Boston in August, 1867, Barnard was present and was 
called upon to give a " general idea of the department and of its 
work." He told the story of the passage of the bill to establish the 
department and called attention to the fact that "it does not recog- 
nize any intention on the part of the Government to create a system 
of national education : nothing of the kind was contemplated." He 
intended to '* collect and disseminate information," and told how' 
widespread had been the localities from which requests for that in- 
formation had come. He also sj^oke of the reports which he was 
preparing and added : 

I have no prejudices of my own to impose on the country. It has been 
my aim to bring to bear the light of past and present experience. My belief 
is that any thing worth preserving has its roots in the past, and to make us 
grow we need all the light which can be brought to bear from every country. 

15 Vide also 30 Am. J. Ed., 318. 

'*= The ISth volume of the American Journal of Education was the American Year iiook 
for 1SG9, the 19th volume was the Report on Education in the District of Columbia, and 
the 20th, issued in 1S70, was the report on Public Instruction in Different Countries. 

" 17 Am. J. Ed., 211. 

«17 Am. J. Ed., 64. 

>» Reprinted in 30 Am. J. Ed., pp. 833. 



110 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

At the close of the speech, the meeting unanimously adopted a 
resolution thanking him and commending the establishment of the 
department. 

On March 15, 1868, Barnard wrote his first annual report.^" He 
referred to the magnitude of his task in comparing the statistics of 
the schools of the principal American cities with those of the District 
of Columbia, and stated ihat he had prepared schedules to obtain 
information, had sought to gain it in several modes and had an 
extended plan of publication to disseminate this information, of 
which the circulai-s issued were samples. Recommendations fol- 
lowed: (1) That there be continued prosecution of investigations 
already begun; (2) that authority be given the commissioner to pub- 
lish documents called for in the establishment of public schools in 
States where they did not exist, and to visit, in person or by repre- 
sentative, such States, as well as to attend educational conventions in 
other States; (3) that, as the commissioner is already overworked, 
in order not to delay the bureau's work, another clerk be appointed ; 
and that (4) an allowance be made for expenses for the printing, 
books and incidentals, and for obtaining information from foreign 
countries, as well as for the salary of a messenger and for the care 
of the bureau's rooms, which had not been specified in the appropria- 
tion of the previous year, and consequently had been disallowed in 
the settlement of accounts. Barnard had himself borne some of 
these expenses during the past year. The report, submitted on June 
2, met with no favorable reception, for, on July 20, 1868, a bill was 
signed abolishing the Department of Education and creating in its 
place an Office of Education, attached to the Department of the 
Interior, and reducing Barnard's salary to $3,000 a year. A year 
later the title was changed to the Bureau of Education, a name which 
it still retains. 

In August, 1868, the American Institute of Instruction, meeting at 
Pittsfield, Mass., adopted resolutions, stating that it regarded the 
" establishment of a national department of education as of the high- 
est importance " ; regarded Barnard as " eminently fitted to organize 
and conduct the affairs of this department, both by his previous pur- 
suits and possession of a large library of educational statistics and 
his general acquaintance with educational interests," and that it 
would memorialize Congress for the "continuance of this depart- 
ment." 

Barnard was present at that meeting and opened the discussion on 
" Defects in our present system of education." He felt that the great- 
est lack was in not having in the schools of any State a " course of 
instruction," on a "broad and comprehensive plan," so as to give 



«» 30 Am. J. Ed., 201. Ex. Doc. 299, 40th Cong., 2d sess. 



UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. Ill 

"liberal culture." A great part of our school population was out- 
side of the schools, even in our cities, and no compulsion caused regu- 
larit}^ in attendance. We had no " secondary schools that occupy a 
position corresponding to the German gymnasia or the lyceums of 
France, by which the foundations are laid deeper and stronger and 
the edifice is carried higher, so that an effective preparation is made 
for the superior education which should follow." "In our privata 
academies and secondary schools there is no general supervision. 
Compulsory education laws should be passed. If a parent will not 
send a child to school, he should not be permitted to exercise the 
privileges of a citizen." Great advance has been made in a quarter 
of a century in the liberality with which schools are supported and in 
the salaries paid to teachers; but teaching was not 3^et sufficiently 
recognized as a profession, nor the advice of teachers sought in all 
matters that relate to schools. Teachers should put a " check on the 
admission of unworthy members " to the profession and the " certifi- 
cate, by which a teacher enters a school, should be given by the 
teachers as a body." The discussion of defects should not be limited 
to those of elementary schools, but should also consider those of 
secondary schools and colleges. 

Barnard had turned his attention to the preparation of a Report 
on Public Instruction in the District of Columbia under a congres- 
sional resolve of March 29, 18G7.^^ He compared conditions there 
with those in other American and European cities and recommended 
a new organization, in his report of January 19, 1870. After a dib- 
cussion of the territory, population, and resources, the history and 
conditions of schools in the District, he proposed the establishment 
of a Board of Control, of 18 members, appointed for three years, one- 
third retiring from office each year. Of this board, one-fifth should 
be appointed by the President and one-fifth elected by the taxpayers 
and voters in the District. The mayor and treasurer of the munici- 
pal corporation within the District should be ex officio members, the 
teachers' association should elect one or more delegates, the board of 
health should have a representative, as should special institutions of 
science and literature^ while one or more should represent parents 
and guardians. Of course, this was a hopelessly complex and un- 
workable plan. There were to be three other boards. The Board of 
Instruction was to be composed of all teachers, appointed at first 
provisionally, after presentation of testimonials and passage of 
examinations. Permanent appointment should come when addi- 
tional evidence of success in teaching was shown. No teacher should 
be dismissed except upon a written recommendation of the inspector 
general. A life assurance plan should be adopted for teachers. The 

30 Am. J. Ed., 241. 



112 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAKD. 

Board of Inspection should consist of the secretary of the board of 
control, the inspector general, the special inspectors, etc. Tl-^ Board 
of School Visitors should consist of two for each school, who should 
visit that school every month, and should be elected by the parents 
and guardians of the schoTars yearly. Under these boards the 
schools should- be organized as follows: (1) Primary, intended for 
children from 3 to 8 years old; (2) intermediate, from 8 to 12 years 
old; (3) secondary, from 12 to 16 years old; (4) superior, or special, 
to carry students to the end of the sophomore year in the collego 
course and prepare them for teaching, business, trades, and design, 
or admission to national special schools, in which schools special 
emphasis should be placed in teaching the languages of countries 
with which we have commercial and diplomatic relations; (5) sup- 
plementary schools and agencies, with lectures. In the curriculum 
Barnard would have included music and drawing, physical develop- 
ment, moral and mental philosophy, political and geographical 
studies, at least one language, mathematics, natural science, and tho 
English language and literature. It is interesting to find that his 
study of the record of the schools for negroes led him to write that it 
Was " so complete a vindication of their willingness to be taught and 
ability to profit by the best and highest instruction." ^^ 

While commissioner, Barnard also prepared, in pursuance of a 
call made upon him by the House of Eepresentatives on January 19, 
1870, an extensive report entitled " National Education, Science and 
Art, Systems, Institutions and Statistics of Scientific Instruction 
applied to national industries in different countries, Volume I, Con- 
tinental Europe." -' This was intended as the first of a series of the 
three volumes, of which the second, dealing with the res^ of Europe, 
and the third, dealing with the American States, were never printed. 
In fact, this volume was not complete when Barnard severed his 
connection with the bureau on March 15, 1870, and the preface to its 
second edition was dated HartfoiTl, July, 1871. The whole three vol- 
umes were intended to constitute only a part of the fourth division of 
a gigantic scheme, conceived by Barnard 16 years before, for which 
the volumes of the American Journal of Education were intended 
to provide material. 

On January 25, 1870,-* William F. Prosser, of Tennessee, in the 
House of Representatives, advoeatisd the passage of a bill for a 
national system of education. He adverted to the neglect of educa- 
tion by the United States and to the impairment cvf the efficiency of 

" Upon examination of these reports Mayo said that " we find it difficult to decide wliat 
bettnr message could liave been set before tiie educational public of the country." Rep. 
of Commis. of Ed., 1902, I, 901. 

23 Binder's Title : Technical Education, rublishcd in 20 Am. J. Ed., and separately, 
1872. pp. 807. 

^ Cong. Globe for 1869-70, p. 759. 



TJISriTED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. 113 

the Bureau of Education by the reduction of its appropriations. In 
a long speech he characterized as puerile and trifling objections the 
arguments urged against the Department of Education by the Sec- 
retary of the Interior in 1868, to the effect that the department 
was not needed, as the reports of the Department of the Interior 
would give full educational statistics ; that the information obtained 
by the commissioner would not be important ; and that education in 
the States, anyway, fell within their exclusive province. He obtained 
little support, however, and Barnard resigned his office, to be suc- 
ceeded by Gen. John Eaton.^^ Shortly afterwards, on June 6, 1870,-" 
George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, speaking on education, referred 
to Barnard's reputation abroad, stated that the report upon Technical 
Education was well worth the whole cost of the bureau to the Fed- 
eral Government, and claimed that if an adequate clerical force and 
authorit}^ to i^rint had been given Barnard his comprehensive surAey 
of national education would long ago have been published. 

25 On Feb. 20 and 21, 1871, Hon. E. Casserly, of California, in tlie Senate attacked 
Eaton's first report. 

^<^ Appendix to Cong. Globe for 18G9-70, p. 478. 

107018°— 19 8 



Chapter X. 
LAST YEARS (1870-1900). 



When Barnard retired from the office of Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, his public cai-eer was virtually at an end. He was only 59 
years of age, and he lived 30 years longer, but his period of ini- 
portant activity was over. For 10 years he worked at the American 
Journal of Education, and then for a score of years more he grew 
old gracefully, receiving the lionor w^hich was his need, becoming the 
Nestor of American education, harassed only by the res angustce donni. 

As soon as he left his office he returned from Washington to Hart- 
ford and resumed the publication of the Journal of Education. The 
report on technical schools in Europe appeared as volume 21, with a 
preface dated January 15, 1871. Volume 22 contained, in addition 
to a similar report as to Great Britain, articles on medieval univer- 
sities, the Hartford high schools, schools in Belgium, Germany, 
France, Scotland, and Sweden, school architecture, and on nautical 
and agricultural education. In 1873 volume 23 followed, present- 
ing articles on such subjects as female education, the school and 
teacher in English literature, studies and conduct, German, French, 
and English pedagogy. Volume 24 w^as announced as the last of the 
second or national series, and the subscribers were told, in a preface 
dated March 15, 1873, that the volumes which had been published — ■ 

presented a more comprehensive survey of the entire field of national systems 
and institutions of education in all countries in wliich schools for general or 
special pui'poses have been recognized and administered by law than is to be 
found in the same number of volumes in any language, so far as we know. 

Barnard hoped to close his editorial labors by issuing an interna- 
tional series of the Journal in which the existing status of schools 
and the problems of public instruction in different countries would 
bc^ discussed by educators and teachers. In volume 24 appeared 
articles on schools in Finland, Spain, and Scotland, endowments of 
American colleges, history of superior education in antiquity, early 
Christian schools. State systems of common schools in the United 
States, educational statistics of 1840 in the United States, benefactors 
of American education, extracts from Winterbotham's View of the 

114 



LAST YEAKS ( ISlO-lOOO ) . 115 

United States in 1796, Noah Webster's Views in 1806, English uni- 
versities, teaching orders of the Roman Catholic Church, and mili- 
tary schools in Russia.^ 

The first volume of this international series '^ contained an index 
of 150 pages to the first 24 volumes^ and then offered the reader 
articles upon school architecture, Frederick the Great and the Mur- 
(;uis of Pombal as educational reformers, the history of school 
punishments, English home life and education in the seventeenth 
century, teaching orders of the Roman Catholics, Episcopalian semi- 
luiries, the Council of Trent, Glastonbury Abbey, Vincent de Paul 
and the sisters of charity, Scotch parochial anci elementary schools, 
(ierman universities, superior instruction in Ireland, reminiscences 
of English and Swiss schools, sketches of Noah Webster, H. K. 
Oliver, Benjamin Silliman, Thomas Bewick, Robert Owen, etc. 

In 1877 Barnard published volume 27, containing an extremely 
miscellaneous collections of articles: Efforts to Christianize the 
Indians, early schools in Virginia, early public schools in Massachu- 
setts, Harvard College, Loyola, Vives and Spanish pedagogy, Ober- 
lin and French pedagogy, Scotch universities, chairs of education, 
English and French views of German universities, trade schools, 
Edwards on Literary Institutions,* military education, sketches of 
Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Jef- 
ferson, Count Rumford, Stephen Girard, A. B. Alcott, and John 
Carter Brown, Smith College, public instruction in ancient Greece, 
Oxford University, Robert Lowe on classical education, school re- 
form in Holland. 

In 1878, volume 28 appeared, in which we find a letter from R. H, 
Quick, the English educator, stating that the Journal contains " a 
range of topics in the history, biography, organization, administra- 
tion, institutions, and statistics of national sj'stems, and in the prin- 
ciples and methods of education not to be found elsewhere in the 
English language." Among the articles contained in this A'olume 
we find such titles as : Reminiscences of G. B. Emerson, the Sheffield 
Scientific School, Foundations of Gov. Edward Hopkins in Hart- 
ford and New Haven, sketches of Miss C. E. Beecher, Wm. H. Sew- 
ard, Lord Macaulay and Gibbon, Master Tisdale and the Lebanon 
School, the Leicester Academy, schools in English literature, with 
quotations from Hoole, Irving, and WordsAvorth; Cambridge Uni- 
versity, Connecticut's civil and educational policy, Durham and 

1 Barnard never issued volume 25. C. W. Bardeen, after 1901, bound up some copies 
of the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1880, put a title page with a 
date, 1876, in the book, and called it volume 26. 

2 Vol. 26, 1876. 

3 There are no pages from 152 to 193. 

* Reprinted from the Quarterly Register. 



116 LIFE OF HENRY BARNAED. 

London Universities, University of Leipzig, law and professional 
studies.^ 

Volume 30 was published in 1880, and contained articles on Wm. 
T. Harris, the education of princes, Roman Catholic schools, Welles- 
\oy College, the Department of Education, kindergartens, Massa- 
chusetts academies, female education, etc. 

In the preface to volume 31, dated March 1, 1881, Barnard stated 
that he hoped to continue the Journal for several 3^ears, but, in fact, 
this was the last volume issued. It contained articles on Pestalozzi, 
kindergartens, education of girls in Connecticut before 1800, French 
pedagogy, the educational needs of the South, Columbia College, pub- 
lic libraries in Connecticut, Connecticut school statistics for 1875, 
Chauncey's educational sermon in 1656, female education in England. 

On September 18, 1881, he wrote" that he intended to go to Sara- 
toga in the next month, as his " health is now below par." For the 
first time in many years he was not doing any literary wOrk, and 
indeed had not done much since the death of his son, which caused 
a " revolution in his inner life." He had in truth completed his work, 
though the serene evening of his day was still to continue for nearly 
20 years. 

In 1901 C. W. Bardeen, an educational publisher of Syracuse, 
N. Y., purchased all Barnard's stock of publications and the plates 
of his works, and a year later, with a title page dated 1882, he issued 
A'olume 32 of the Journal, in which he stated that Barnard had pre- 
pared parts of several volumes, as far as number 37, but that upon 
examination it was found that all the matter which was in shape for 
publication could be included in one volume. This volume contains a 
reprint of Locke's Conduct of the Understanding and of articles 
on the history of education in the United States, and the development 
of religious instruction in the United States, which Barnard had pre- 
pared for a two-volume work entitled " Eighty Years' Progress," 
published in 1861. E. A. Abbott's Hints on Home Training and 
Teaching, plans for the new building of the Hartford High School, 
a reprint of Barnard's report in 1850, articles on colleges of a,gricul- 
ture, and on F. W. Farrar, Elizabeth Peabody, and E. Thring are 
among those found in this volume.'' 

During the decade beginning in 1871 Barnard also prepared new 
and enlarged editions of many of his former publications, adding to 
their pages articles reprinted from the plates of the Journal. One 

^ Volume 29 was never issued. C. W. Bardeon, after 1901, .bound some copies of the 
report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1877, with a title page, aa 
volume 29. 

" To Mrs. Gordon L. Ford ; letter is in New York Public Library. 

'' Vide C. W. Bardeen, " Educational Journalism," address to N. Y. State Teachers' 
Assoc, 1885. Thos. W. Bieknell, " Brief History of Educational Journalism in N. E.," 
before Int. Cong, of Educators at Washington, 1886. 



LAST YEARS (1870-1900). 117 

title at leajt seems to have been entirely neAv : " Educational Devel- 
opment, contributions to the history of the original free schools, in- 
corporated academies and common schools of different grades in 
New England." ® This book contains some interesting material, such 
as the reminiscences of Noah Webster, written in 1840, of Heman 
Humphrey, Joseph T. Buckingham, Eliphalet Nott, Peter Parley, 
William Darlington, Josiah Quincey, etc. The latter portion of the 
volume discourses comprehensively on educational periodicals, school 
books, apparatus, and schoolhouses, literary societies, and lecture 
courses. 

Oscar Browning referred in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ® to the 
American Journal of Education as a " great work, * * * by f ar 
the most valuable work in our language on the history of education." 
When the United States Bureau of Education published an Analyti- 
cal Index to the Journal in 1892,^° Dr. William T. Harris, then com- 
missioner, in the preface characterized the Journal of Education as a 
" library of education in itself." In its publication. Dr. Barnard used 
the best years of his life and all his private fortune. The complete 
index to these volumes goes a long way toward furnishing a key to 
all educational literature." Sixteen years earlier. President Daniel 
0. Gilman^^ had given the Journal hardly less praise, writing that 
the " comprehensiveness of this work and its persistent publication, 
under many adverse circumstances, at great expense, by private and 
almost unsupported exertions, entitled the editor to the grateful 
recognition of all investigators of our system of education." 

As early as January 24, 1878, Barnard, writing to E. PI. Quick,^^ 
stated that the effort to publish the Journal had caused him to 
involve his property in mortgages. If he could do so, he would com- 
plete volume 28. If he could not meet his obligations, the plates 
would be melted for type metal and the volumes on hand would be 
sold.^^ Quick wrote to the educational superintendents in New 
England : " I would as soon hear that there was talk of pulling down 
one of our cathedrals and selling the stones for building material." 
With the cooperation of Dr. William T. Harris, a corporation was 
organized in New York, having a capital stock of $25,000, of which 
$2,000 were paid in, to carry on the Journal. The plan was not suc- 
cessful, and in July, 1891, the Henry Barnard Publication Co. was 

* In four parts, to average 200 pages each, in all 770 pages, 1878. 

"Dth ed., vol. 7, p. 679. 

"Pp. 128. 

" North Am. Rev., January, 1876, vol. 122, p. 193. 

^ On Quick's opinion of Barnard, see London Jour, of Ed. for July, 1875. Quick was 
one of Barnard's staunchest admirers, and dedicated with " the esteem and admiration 
of the author " a volume entitled " Educational Reformers," stating that Barnard, " in 
a long life of self-sacrificing labor, has given to the English language an educational 
literature." 

»a Monroe, p. 28. 



118 LIFE OF HENKY BARNARD. 

organized and the Hemy Barnard Society, payment of membership 
in whicli should entitle anyone to a discount in buyino- any of Bar- 
nard's boolcs. These projects were indorsed by President Nicholas 
Murray Butler in the Educational Review,'* who said every teacher 
in the country ought to assist them and that the Journal, " this monu- 
mental work, must be found in every pedagogical library worthy of 
the name," for " there is no other pedagogical encj^clopa^dia that 
compares with it." Little came from these schemes, however, nor did 
the attempt of the Connecticut State Teachers' Association in 1890 to 
raise an annuity for Barnard succeed. Speaking of this last plan, Dr. 
A. E. Winship, in the American Journal of Education,^^ stated that 
" It is not too much to say that the schools of every town in the land 
to-day, directly or indirectly, enjoy higher and better privileges in 
consequences of the earnest labors and appeals of Henry Barnard." 
A final unsuccessful attempt to aid Barnard financially was made 
in 1897, when his friends in the Connecticut Legislature tried to 
secure for him first a pension and then a gratuity of $1,000, which 
they said was about the amount he had spent from Ms own funds 
when he was a State officer. 

Other laurels reached him, however. A public school was named 
for him in New Haven, and the name of the South Green, where he 
lived in Hartford, was changed to Barnard Square. In 1871, Rev. 
Ray Palmer ^^ wrote of Barnard's " career of devoted and untiring 
labor, in t»he course of which he has rendered such distinguished 
service to the cause of popular education." Looking over this career 
from the time when, in 1838, he " gave himself to the work with the 
enthusiasm of an apostle," Palmer concluded that, " probably, no one 
man in the United States has done as much to advance, direct, and 
consolidate the movement for popular education." Charles Northend, 
of New Britain, wrote in 1895 that, to Mann and Barnard — 

the whole country is largely indebted for the interest that has been awakened 
in the cause of popular education and for the great progress that has been 
made in securing to the young of. the present and future generations advantages 
far greater and better than were enjoyed by those of former tinies.^'^ 

A bronze medal was given Barnard at the Vienna Exposition of 
1873, a gold medal and a diploma at the Philadelphia Centennial 
Exposition, a bronze medal at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 
a diploma at the Melbourne Exposition of 1880, and another diploma 
at the New Orleans Exposition of 1884.'^ Columbia University hon- 
ored him in 1887 with the degree of L. H. D. 

" Vol. 3, p. 409, April. 1892. 

« Boston, .Tune 19, 1890, vol. 31, p. 392. 

i« Int. Rev., vol. 1, p. 63, June. 

"N. E. Mag., N. S., XIV, 500. 

IS Norton, pp. IL'O to 133. In 1894, under Prof. Will S. Monroe, the class in pedagogy 
at the Leland Stanford, Jr., University devoted a week to the study of Barnard's life and 
times. 



LAST YEARS (1870-1900). 119 

From time to time he visited educational meetings and was re- 
ceived with honor. At the fiftieth meeting of the ximerican Institute 
of Instruction, held at Fabyans, in July, 1879, Barnard read a paper 
on " The treatment of neglected and destitute children," who should 
be taken out of their environment and put in well-ordered Christian 
homes, if possible, and if that be not possible, be placed in industrial 
homes. In 1883, at the same place and before the same association, 
he spoke on school supervision, giving some of his own reminiscences. 
In the autumn of 1888, J. G. Fitch ^^ met him at a teachers' meeting 
in Rhode Island and found him " in his honored old age as keenly in- 
terested as ever in the advancement of educational science and in the 
practical improvement of scholastic methods." He attended the Ed- 
ucational Congress at Chicago in 1893 for three weeks as chairman 
of the educational journal section, and was introduced to the as- 
semblage by Bishop Fallows, who had greeted him in 1859 on behalf 
of the students of the University of Wisconsin. In 1891 he visited 
Boston, and in 1899 he addressed the Rhode Island Institute of In- 
struction in Providence. Every year, at the end of June, he went to 
New Haven to be present at the Yale commencement. Attended by 
his faithful daughter, his venerable figure, with its patriarchal beard, 
was a conspicuous sight upon the campus, and his memory of the 
faces and identity of the persons he met was quite remarkable. Most 
of his time was spent, however, in his birthplace, where he greeted 
benignly anyone who came to pay him respect or to ask for informa- 
tion. It was his habit to rise at 5 a. m. until he was 85 years old, and 
to work in his garden and library until noon. His m/ignum opus^ 
or permanent monument, in the Journal was complete, " a source 
whelice to draw the story of the early growth of American educa- 
tional life." The visitor to this '■'' sturdy pioneer of the public school 
system, this Nestor of the modern science of pedagogy," to whom 
with Mann, " we owe the initiative of our fruitful public educational 
methods," found him still " erect, compactly built, with a noble head 
and flowing white beard," looking " like a benign patriarch." ^o His 
" love of animals, especially cats, which was an illustration of his 
gentle kindness," led him often to write " at his desk, with a kitten 
on his shoulder and another playing among his papers." His family 
recall him as " most intolerant of personal criticism," and as never 
allowing "an unkind word to be spoken at his table. Even a 
stranger might have suft'ered a mild reproof, if he or she offended in 
this regard," when he was present.^^ 

1° Notes. on Am. Schools and Training College, p. 91. In August, 1899, be visited New 
York City. 

2" Critic, vol. 30, p. 64, Jan. 23, 1897. 

^ Letters of Miss Mary Barnard, Mar. 7, 1916. 



120 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

In writing a sketch of Barnard, in 1897, Frederick C. Norton gave 
tliis testimonial to the delight of his company : ^^ 

To see liliu in his ripe old !ige, with elastic step, upright form, manly and 
scholarly countenance ; to hear the words of warm and courteous welcome with 
which he receives all who enter his home ; to listen to the discourse with which 
he charms them, is truly a great pleasure and a great boon. 

Sorrows also came to him in those later years. His only son died 
in 1884, and the end of long years of patient suffering came to his 
wife on May 11, 1891. Among the tributes to her memory we may 
select two. ]\Iiss Annie Eliot Trumbull wrote, in the Courant, of 
the— 

piquant brightness which never left her during her 17 years of illness and of 
the example she gave of pain undergone without complaint, of a trust triumph- 
ant over all burdens of weakness, abnegation, and physical distress, and of a 
sweet sunniness maintained even in the presence of the clouds of suffering. 

Kev. ^y. W. Andrews, of the Catholic Apostolic Church, a man of 
rare sweetness of character and Barnard's college friend, wrote of 
her as — 

a lady of rare excellencies of character, in whom the power of Christian faith 
and resignation Avas exemplified with singular beauty. Naturally of great 
sweetness of disposition, her severe trials and sorrows, borne with remarkable 
patience, gave to it a superadded charm, lifting it into the region of heavejily 
saintliness. 

At his eighty-sixth birthday, on January 21, 1897, Barnard re- 
ceived signal honor. The State board of education issued a little 
i:)amphlet entitled " Suggestions for the Observance in the Schools 
of the Birthday of Henr}^ Barnard," in preparation for the event. '^ 
On the birthdaj^ at the hall of the house of representatives in the 
Connecticut State capitol, an assemblage met to do Barnard honor. 
Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, 
was present, as were James L. Hughes, inspector of schools in 
Toronto ; Prof. William G. Sumner, of Yale ; President C. K. Adams, 
of Wisconsin University; Thomas B. Stockwell, superintendent of 
education in Ehode Island; Charles R. Skinner, superintendent of 
the public schools of New York; Eev. Thomas Shahan, D. D., of the 
Catholic University; and George H. Martin, superintendent of the 
Boston schools. Gov. Lorrin A. Cooke presided. A chorus from the 
Hartford High School sang an ode composed by Richard Burton : 

" Conn. Quar. Rev., p. 1.37. 

"^ I'rof. Will S. Monroe, then of the State Normal School of Westflela, Mass., at that 
time issued a " Bibliography of Henry Barnard." The best account of the celebration is 
in P. C. Norton's article in Conn. Quar. Rev., Vol. IV, No. 2, April-June, 189S, pp. 125-137 ; 
also reprinted separately as "America's Greatest Educator." The article contains illus- 
trations of Barnard's home and of portraits and photographs of him in 1830, 1854, 1800, 
1870, 18S6, and 1897. 



LAST YEARS (1810-1900). 121 

In the early clays, in the mornlug haze, 

The builder builded this wall ; 

He heard the cry of the by and by. 

He harked to the future's call, 

Ho saw the hall 

Of learning uplift fair and high. 

And now our sage, in his beautiful age, 

Is pillowed in memories great ; 

His work is blest, for his high behest 

Was the nurture of the State. 

Then let the children for whom we wrought 

Hail him as hero now ; 

The sure-eyed seer, the pioneer, 

With the silver sign on his brow.** 

The mayor of Plartford welcomed the visitors, and the governor 
stated that " the leaven introduced by " Barnard " more than 50 
years ago has continued to work until we have the present free- 
school system." Dr. Harris said that -^ — 

It is deemed a piece of good fortune that we are able to recognize and 
acknowledge the services of a public benefactor while he is yet living in our 
midst. Most recognition comes too tardy for the purposes of comfort and 
consolation of the hero himself; [but now] the Nation rejoices with Connec- 
ticut in paying the tribute of respect to the great educational counsellor of 
the past fifty years, for Dr. Barnard has always been retained as a counsellor 
on all difHcult educational questions by State legislatures, municipal govern- 
ments, and the founders of institutions of learning. The Nation assists you 
to-day in this celebration of the man who has expended his time and his for- 
tune to print and circulate an educational course of reading of 24,000 pages 
and 12 million words. It assists you in bearing testimony to Henry Barnard 
as th» missionary of improved educational methods for the schools of the people, 
the schools which stand before all the philanthropic devices, because they alone 
never demoralize by giving help, they always help the individual to help 
himself. 

This celebratijon led Dr. Harris to insert in the Report of the Com- 
missioner of Education for that year a biography of Barnard, writ- 
ten by Rev. A. D. Mayo, a Unitarian clergyman of great sweetness 
of nature, who was attached to the Bureau of Education.^'' Mayo 
felt that : 

It was of the first importance that now, when the American people were be- 
coming thoroughly aroused to the necessity of a complete reorganization of 

-* Miss Mary M. Adams, of Madison, Wis., sent Barnard a sonnet on that occasion, the 
latter lines of which read : 

" We count it (time) by the seed thy work has sown, 
We mark it on that radiant vesture wrought, 
To bury ignorance and seal its tomb. 
Wc read it, where great Wisdom rears his throne, 
And, in the majesty of that fair thought, 
That makes the barren place know faultless bloom." 
^ Rep. of Commis. of Ed., 1902, I, 888. On Oct. 13, 1899, President Timothy Dwight, 
of Yale, in writing to Barnard referred to his " eminent service in the cause of education." 
^ Kep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1896-97, Vol. I, pp. 769-804. 



122 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

their entire system of uiiiversul education, tliey sliould know what had been 
accomplished and what was being widely discussed elsewhere. 

Referring to Mann and Barnard, he stated that it was fitting that 
Massachusetts and Connecticut — 

which had ffrst established the people's conmion school and lield fast to it 
through the entire colonial period should give to the country these two great men, 
representing the segments of the complete circle of the national education, the 
encyclopedic literary genius that set before the public a complete picture of the 
world's best educational teaching and doing, and the statesmanship that planted 
in the conservative soil of New EngUmd the reconsti'ucted common school, 
which has been adopted as the most precious heritage of that section to the 
building of the new Republic. 

Dr. Barnard lived three and a half years longer,^'^ and then, on 
July 5. 1000, after an illness of some months from kidney and other 
troubles, but -without suffering from declining faculties, the end 
came to him at 118 Main Street, the house where he was born. 
Quietly and peacefully, full of labors and honors, he passed to rest.^^ 
He was the last survivor of his college class. The funeral was held 
in his house two days later, Eev. Francis Goodwin and Eev. C G. 
Bristol, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, officiating. The 
interment was in Cedar Hill Cemetery. Dr. Emerson E. White, in 
reporting Barnard's death to the convention of the National Educa- 
tion Association,-^ on the 12th of that month, referred to him as — 

not only among the earliest, but the ablest advocate of common schools, and 
in his hiter years he carried in his memory the history of common-school prog- 
ress in the United States. He was a part of that history. * * * His great 
work on the kindergarten preceded the pi'actical recognition of kindergailen 
training in the United States. 

Barnard was a — 

great natural representative of the literary side of popular education. There 
was an imperative need of a man of large native capacity, broad culture, and 
catholic temperament, competent to gather into his capacious mind tlie entire 
condition of eductional affairs in all civilized lands; a man by birth, education, 
and social connections commended to the educated class of tlie whole country, 
yet of a patriotism so intelligent and intense that he should be found ready 
to cast in his lot as a day laborer and, if need be, a martyr in the supreme 
cause of the uplifting of the masses in this Republic. He should be one who 
could set before every class of earnest and active teachers and educational 
workers tlie best results of educational thought and activity through Christen- 
dom in a form that would strongly commend itself to the foremost minds at 
home and abroad. 

Such a man was Barnard, Mann's great " colaborer and comple- 
ment," who had given in the American Journal of Education so 
valuable a publication that " nowhere else can be found such a num- 

" At the beginning of 1900 Barnard wrote to Washington to malse Inquiry as to the 
inclusion of statistics of Insanity in tlie coming census. 

28 Samuel Hart, D. D., in 56 N. E. Hist. Geu. Hog. (April. 1902), p. 173. 
*» Proceedings, p. 24. 



LAST YEARS (ISTO-igOO). 123 

ber and variety of interesting monographs respecting the growth of 
the educational spirit and organization in the different States of the 
Union." Mayo asserted: 

It can not be denied that the marvelous intellectual fertility of Henry 
Barnard, as the foremost American literary exponent of the great revival of 
popular education, was somewhat in the way of immediate practical results 
ill reforming abuses and inaugurating radical changes in the scliools. 

Later,. in the year 1900, Mr. C. H. Thurber^^'' wrote that: 

American education must pause in its unresting eagerness of progress and 
stand with bared head by the tomb of its fallen patriarch. Fot- whatsoever 
tilings are true and lovely and of good report in our schools, he thought ou 
these things, and we must think of them and of him together always. 

He saw a " new generation of leadership who knew him not," but 
among whom he moved, a " venerable and majestic figure of the 
past." With high eulogy Mr. Thurber referred to the Journal as 
" the glory of our educational literature," and continued : 

He struck good blows for normal schools, for State organization, for national 
supervision, for sound study of educational problems, for a long list, indeetl, of 
the best things in education. He saw far and he saw clearly — hov\' far and 
how clearly they will never know wl>o do not make some careful study of his 
forceful and varied life. 

At the Yale University Bicentennial, held in October, 1901, Presi- 
dent Cyrus C. Northrop said that foremost among educational lead- 
ers who were Yale graduates and — 

worthy to be classed with Horace Mann, in consideration of the originality of 
his plans and the extended scope of his work, was Henry Barnard, of the class 
of 1830, who closed his long career of usefulness in this first year of the twen- 
tieth century, a man whose influence uiwn the schools and the secondary educa- 
tion of the country was such that the largest convention of the year, with its 
10,000 teachers from all parts of the country, fitly paused in its deliberations to 
celebrate, at one entire session, the remarkable achievements of this distin- 
guished educator. He was a man of original ideas. He believed in progress. 
He never rested satisfied with what most of the world was ready to accept as 
the ultimate attainment. For him there was always something better further 
on, and the great army of educators — good and bad alike — were comix;llcd at 
last to follow his leading.'" 

These words were well deserved. Never has public education had 
a more ardent supporter. He consecrated his every ability to the 
cause and threw himself into it with a combination of scholarship 
and earnestness that was compelling. He lived to the good old age 
()." three score years and ten and died poor in the world's goods but 
rich in the consciousness of having rendered yeoman's service to that 
most fundamental of the functions of democracy — public education. 

29" 8 School Rev., 505, Nov., 1900. 

*" Vide Stokes, " Meiuorials of Eminent Yale Men," p. 309. 



124 LIFE OF HENRY BARNARD. 

In summing up Barnard's career in the Kindergarten Magazine, 
Dr. A. E. Winship wrote : 

No one can ever write about American or European educational affairs from 
1820 to 1S75 without drawing most of liis information and inspiration from tlie 
writings of Henry Barnard. He liad all the instincts of the scientist, the 
patience of a historian, the poise of a statesman, and the zeal of a reformer. 

On July 8, 1901, the National Educational Association, meeting in 
the city of Detroit, Avhere Barnard had so many ties, devoted its 
evening session to a memorial of him.^^ Principal E. O. Lyte, of the 
Millersville (Pa.) Normal School, spoke first upon Barnard's influ- 
ence on the establishment of normal schools in the United States : 

His educational life seemed to carry educational institutions of all kinds witli 
it in its onward sweep. Whatever it was best to do for the advancement of 
education, Henry Barnard tried to do, whether it was to organize State systems 
of scliooLs, to criticize existing systems, to suggest better systems, to start the 
wheels of educational machinery in city or State, or to record tlje progress of 
educational institutions throughout the world. His object was the furtherance 
of public education. The means used for this object were the means he could 
first seize hold of. * * * He was an indefatigable worker, thoroughly de- 
voted to the cause of public education. With clear vision, he saw that no sys- 
tem of education could be successfully administered without a system of State 
normal schools as an integral part of the general system of education. He 
realized that school machinery is deadening, that the teacher is the center of 
the school, and that all real progress in school work must finally be made 
through the teacher.. 

Mr. Newton C. Dougherty, superintendent of schools In Peoria, 111., 
spoke upon Barnard's influence upon the West, and said that this 
influence was " mostly due to the educational literature that he made 
accessible to the people." The third speaker was Charles H. Keycs, 
supervisor of the South District in Hartford, his subject being 
" Henry Barnard's home life and his work and influence upon educa- 
tion as commissioner of Connecticut and Rhode Island." He referred 
to Barnard's personal devotion to the ministry of education and to 
his self -surrender to the work, " which made his naturally eloquent 
appeals irresistible ; " spoke of Barnard's earlier work, and then said 
that the memory of Barnard's personal friendship, during his last 
four years, was " one of the abiding benedictions of my life. * * •" 
The thought of his later life was always keenly sympathetic with the 
best spirit of the advancing age." His rare devotion to his tv.'0 
daughters, Emily and Josephine, was such that : 

He seemed in manner, at times, as much a gallant elder brother as a loved 
and loving father. * * * He had little to say of his own work, but much 
of that of his contemporaries, and as I listened to him I wondered that his song 
was ever one of praise. He seemed to remember only the good endeavor and the 
successful achievement of a vast number of his colaborers in his numerous and 
widely separated fields of labor. 

»* Proceedings, pp. 390 et scq. 



LAST YEARS (1870-1900). 125 

In conversation, forgetting Barnard's " distinguished and vener- 
able appearance," one was " betrayed into the attitude of a colleague 
and equal," for " he impressed you as a friend of every one whose 
heart responded to a noble impulse." 

Col. Francis W. Parker, of the University of Chicago, next spoke 
upon " Barnard as an educational critic." He said that Mann and 
Barnard belonged to those who— 

believe that tlie inuer development of the human soul in righteousness is the one 
purpose of education. They began with an awful scantiness and meagerness of 
resources; they met with sullen indifference as to common education on the 
part of the people, but they had sublime faith in the cause and in the peo- 
ple. * * * Barnard's great work was to introduce to the people of America 
the best that had been done in education in all parts of the world. * * * 
He made known to English readers Comenius, Retich, Sturm, Fellenberg, Pesta- 
lozzi, Diesterweg, and Froebel. 

In the Connecticut Common School Journal he published a maga- 
zine so good that " I doubt whether there is any school publication 
to-day so rich in ideas and yet so adapted to the situation of the time." 
We owe Barnard " our profund gratitude for a vast wealth of educa- 
tional literature." By Avay of personal reminiscence he added: 

One of the most profitable days of my life was the day I spent with Dr. 
Barnard in visiting schools. * * * My gxxide was the keenest, truest critic 
of school work I ever knew, and I have been fortunate in knowing many. 

Dr. William T. Harris, one of Barnard's successors in Washington, 
was the last speaker, his subject being the establishment of the office 
of the Connnissioner of Education of the United States and Henry 
Barnard's relation to it. He spoke of Barnard as " a heroic figure, 
through his devotion to this one great purpose, namely, the prepara- 
tion of a series of volumes containing all that is solid and valuable 
in the history of education." From Gen. John Eaton, Avho imme- 
diately succeeded Barnard, Harris quoted this estimate: "My in- 
debtedness personalty was great. To me he seemed to be the most 
eminent man at that time in the country in the knowledge of educa- 
tional literature, and I felt great misgivings when I was called by 
Gen. Grant to become his successor." ^^ 

In the report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 
1902, Dr. Harris printed an extended chapter, treating of Barnard's 
life and work. In the introductory portion of the report, the state- 
ments were made that : 

Dr. Barnard's work in Connecticut and Rhode Island corresponds in time and 
purpose with that of Horace Mann, in Massachusetts. Their names are indeed 
inseparably associated in the movement which determined for all time the 
essential features of public systems of education throughout our country. 

The work of Dr. Barnard, in inviting practical reforms in education, was 
supplemented by that of collecting in one great body the written records, not 



« Rep. of U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1902, I, 801. 



126 LIFE OF HENKY BARNARD. 

only of this movement, but of all siiuilur movements in the history of mankind, 
and it is as an untiring collector and i)ublisher of information pertaining to the 
interest which absorbed his attention, his fame has spread to all civilized 
nations. His enthusiasm for this particular line of research naturally directed 
his mind to tlie importance of some central clearing house of eduoitional infor- 
mation and he seems to liave been the fiist person to publicly suggest such an 
agency. 

His name is identified with all the preliminary measures that led eventually 
to the establishment of the National Bureau of Education, and he naturally 
received the appointment of commissioner, immediately upon its creation.^' 

The Rev. A. D. Mayo wrote further in the report ; 

He was all his life the friend and adviser of every important movement for 
educational reform In every State, from Horace Mann and his colleagues in 
Massachusetts to the men who shaped the educational systems of the new States 
of the West * * * indeed, it would be difficult to name the department of 
educational activity in the century in which Henry Barnard did not appear as 
••a most welcome, suggestive, and inspiring worker.^* 

Such were the judgments of Barnard's contemporaries and friends. 
After the Japse of years, reviewing his career as we have done, Ave 
can characterize him from a more objective point of view. He was 
a man of a vision, who in season and out of season preached the mes- 
sage of that vision. He early saw that a Republic with universal 
suifrage must have universal education, imparted to all the children 
of the people, in a school year of full length, by the instruction of 
thoroughly trained teachers, many of whom should be women, in 
buildings suitably constructed for educational purposes, equipped 
with sufficient furniture, apparatus, and libraries. This instruction 
should be supplemented by lectures, and the teachers should be ren- 
dered more efficient by means of teacher's institutes periodically held 
and also by means of educational literature, which should appear 
both in the form of magazmes and of books. Toward the achieve- 
ment of this ideal he labored for years and accomplished much. He 
was a veritable apostle of education and brought to the United States 
not only his own message, but also the messages of great European 
educators. He saw that the State must concern itself with the task 
of instruction and not leave it to the country or township exclusively, 
and that there was a greot opportunity for the Nation to assist in 
educational matters, at least in the way of the collection and diffusion 
of information upon such subjects. Like that of all human beings, his 
view was not complete. Though the president of two institutions of 
higher learning, he never seems fully to have integrated his educa- 
tional system, from its base in the primary school to its summit in 
the university. Nor did he develop during his later j^ears, as in his 
early ones. His constructive work was finished by 1860, and the re- 
maining 40 years added little to the breadth of the vision or to its 

»» Rep. of U. S. Commls. of Ed., 1902. XLIX. 
•* Ibid., I, 892. 



LAST YEARS (18*10-1900). 127 

details. Like all men who see visions, he appeared visionary at 
times to other men, and wrapt in the contemplation of his ideal he 
sometimes lost sight of the practical. Sacrificing his time and money 
to his great cause, he did not always remember that other persons 
could not be expected to make like sacrifices to the same cause. 

When all is said and done, however. Dr. Barnard remains a ma- 
jestic figure in the history of American education, worthy of the 
veneration and gratitude of all. With the name of Horace Mann, 
his name will always be linked as one who aroused public interest in 
public education, who convinced people of the need of professionally 
trained teachers, of proper schoolhouses, of adequate educational ap- 
paratus, of sufficient educational literature, of a course of study 
adapted to the needs of all the youth of all sections of the country. 
These are no small services to the United States, and those who come 
after must not take these gifts as a matter of course, forgetting the 
men to whose exertions they are due. Not only the teacl)^rs, but all 
those taught in all the schools of the Republic owe a debt, ever to be 
remembered, to Henry Barnard for his single-minded life-long de- 
votion to the educational ideal which came to him in that vision 
which was vouchsafed to him when he sat, as a young man, in the 
Connecticut Legislature. 



APPENDIX. 
REMINISCENCES OF HENRY BARNARD. 

By David N. Camp. 
[Written Mar. 17, 191ti, when Mr. Camp was 96 ytars old.] 



My acquaintance with Mr. Baruai'd began in 1838. The board of commis- 
sioners had been created by the legislature, 1838, and Mr. Barnard had been 
appointed secretary. He became the executive officer of the board, and one of 
his first official acts was to make provision for a teachers' institute, or tem- 
porary normal school, believed to be the first in America. It was my privilege 
to be a member of that institution. About 25 young men, nearly all of whom 
had had some experience as teachers, met in a room of the Hartford Grammar 
School and received instruction for nearly two months from Mr. Wright and 
Mr. Post, of the grammar school ; Prof. Charles Davies, of West Point ; Rev. Dr. 
Barton, of Andover, Mass. ; Mr. Gallaudet and Mr. Brace, of Hartford, and 
others. The instruction and lectures were invaluable, but free to the students. 
Nearly the whole expense of the institute was borne by Mr. Barnard. He also 
edited and published the Connecticut Common School Journal from August, 
1838, to August, 1842. This periodical was also a matter of expense to Mr. 
Barnard, but served as an important agency in communicating with school 
officers, teachers, and the people of the State. It also presented the condition 
and characteristics of schools in Connecticut and other States and many of the 
countries of Europe.^ 

When the Connecticut Normal School was established, in 1847-1850, Mr. 
Barnard was appointed principal and superintendent of common schools. As 
I became a teacher in the normal school, I saw Mr. Barnard often. He took 
some of his meals with my family and I as often ate at his table when called 
to his house on business. Later in our friendship his son recited to me, and I 
was often at the family board. 

I became impressed with the refinement and charm of the family. Mrs. 
Barnard was a cultivated woman, who presided with grace and dignity. She 
was a devoted Roman Catholic and said grace at the meals at which she pre- 
sided. I do not know that Mr. Barnard made any profession of religion, but 
I do know that he was a man of prayer. We repeatedly traveled together, 
and at private houses of our friends both occupied the same chamber at night. 

Mr. Barnard was ever considerate of the welfare of others. At one time we 
were together on a steamboat, on our way to Essex, to open a teachers' insti- 
tute. We had invitations to the hospitality of a school officer. Mr. Barnard 
said one of us must meet our host, who will be at the wharf, and go with him 
to supper, while the other opened the meeting. It was agreed that he, Mr. 

1 It should be noted that from 1838-1842 Mr. Barnard was not " superintendent of 
schools," as given In Monroe's biography and some other books, but " secretary of the 
board of commissioners of common schools." 

129 

107018°— 19 9 



130 LIFE or HEISTRY BARISTARD. 

Barnard, shoiilcl have suppei' on the boat and I should go with our host to his 
home. The steamboat was late and did not arrive at Essex until time of open- 
ing the meeting. We were met at the wharf by friends with carriages and 
taken to the assembly hall, where a large audience was waiting for the opening 
of the meeting. We both took part. After reaching the guest chamber at 10 
p. m. Mr. Barnard recollected that I had had no supper, and taking two luscious 
pears from his pocket insisted that I should eat them before retiring. 

Mr. Barnard was untiring in work, frequently being engaged until a late 
hour at night, and he justly expected full service of others. Soon after my work 
at the normal school began there was to be a week's vacation. As the term was ^ 
closing on Saturday I received a letter from him saying that he had made 
appointments for me to lecture the next week in 11 different towns in Tolland, 
New London, and Middlesex Counties, giving two lectures each day except Sat- 
urday, and on one day three in three diiterent towns. 

Mr. Barnard never taught at the normal school, but occasionally gave a lec- 
ture or address. During his term of office, as principal and superintendent of 
common schools, he lectured and had meetings in the different counties of the 
State. 

By holding teachers' meetings and attending educational conventions he did 
much to awaken an interest in the improvement of schools. One year he se- 
cured the adjournment of the annual meeting of the State Teachers' Associa- 
tion from county to county until sessions were held in all the eight counties of 
the State in a single year. 

After Mr. Barnard's resignation in 1855 he was much of the time in the 
Middle West, and I saw little of him until 1866. On account of ill health I had 
resigned and was traveling in Europe, where I received a letter from Mr. 
Barnard asking me to go with him to Annapolis, Md., and assist in reorgan- 
izing St. John's College, a State institution, which had been closed during the. 
war. Mr. Barnard had been elected president of the college. During the 
Civil War the college had been closed and the buildings used as offices, bar- 
racks, and for other needs of the Army. A railway track had been con- 
structed across the college campus for the use of the Army, the fence had been 
destroyed, and the grounds and buildings left in an unattractive condition. 
Much was required in repairs and reconstruction to prepai-e the buildings and 
grounds for the reopening of the college. 

I had returned from Europe in time to be present with Mr. Barnard at the 
opening of the college. Mr. Barnard's family came with him, or soon after 
his arrival, and occupied one of the college buildings. Mine came soon after 
and occupied another of the college buildings ; so we were near each other, and 
I saw much of Mr. Barnard at the college and at his home. 

On the establishment by Congress of the United States Bureau of Education, 
Mr. Barnard was appointed commissioner, and resigned his position as presi- 
dent of St. John's College. He wished me to go to the bureau with him. My 
work at first was at the office at Washington, where I saw Mr. Barnard every 
day. The work of the office was exacting, and Mr. Barnard was often perplexed 
as to what measures to adopt to secure the highest efficiency. Educators and 
friends had different views and sometimes obstructed rather than helped the 
work. 

Mr. Barnard wished me to visit educational institutions and different States 
and report to him. In this service I went as far west as Chicago and St. Louis 
and was in daily communication with Dr. Barnard, but did not see him per- 
sonally. He wished to obtain accurfite iiifoi'niatiou of the condition of schools 
and the educational sentiment of the country. 



APPEXDIX. 131 

For Instance, he had seen a large poster with his name attached setting forth 
the advantages to be obtained at an institution located in southern Illinois. He 
wished me to obtain all facts regarding it. I visited the place mentioned. As 
I alighted from the train I asked the station agent -the locality of the institu- 
tion. He expressed surprise and said he had never heard of such a place. I 
found other citizens equally ignorant. At last, at the post office, I found a 
man who directed me to a vacant lot, where I found a brick foundation of the 
institution described in such glowing terms. This was not the only case in 
which the reality was quite different from the representation made. 

Mr. Barnard was desirous of obtaining knowledge of the actual condition 
of public and private schools from personal observation and interviews with 
teachers and school officers. The sickness and death of my father compelled 
me to be at home in Connecticut, and I saw little of Dr. Barnard until after 
his resignation from the bureau and he had resumed his residence in Hartford. 

Our homes were then but 10 miles apart, and we frequently met. I last saw 
him in the sick chamber a few days before his death, when he recalled some 
of our experiences together and mentioned many incidents of our worli. 



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